The    Contemporary    American    Poet    Series 

OBeorge  Qftrtoarb  J©ootrfierrj> 

A  STUDY  of  HIS  POETRY 

BY -LOUIS    •    V    •     LEDOUX 


[5T 


AROiffivWSTIN-COATES 

•   HIS    •   BOOK   • 


UJUAJI 


THE    CONTEMPORARY 
AMERICAN    POET    SERIES 

EDITORS  :  William  Stanley  Braithwaite 
Joseph  Lebowich 


The  Contemporary 
American  Poet  Series 

George  Edward  Woodberry 
Edwin  Arlington  Robinson 
Bliss  Carman 

Josephine  Preston  Peabody 
James  Oppenheim 
Anna  Hempstead  Branch 
George  Sterling 
Edgar  Lee  Masters 
Amy  Lowell 
Richard  Le  Gallienne 
Robert  Frost 
Percy  Mackaye 

THE  POETRY  REVIEW  COMPANY 

12     CHAUNCYSTREKT 
CAMBRIDGE    ::      ::    MASSACHUSETTS 


GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 

A    STUDY    OF   HIS    POETRY 


George  Edward  Woodberry 
A  Study  of  his  Poetry 


By 
Louis  V.  Ledoux 


The  Poetry  Review  Company 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts 
1917 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  LOUIS  V.  LEDOUX 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  March,  1917 


BY     LOUIS     V.     LEDOUX 

GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY 

THE  STORY  OF  ELEUSIS 

YZDRA 

THE  SHADOW  OF  JETNA 

ETC. 


2023978 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER      I  ....  13 

CHAPTER    II  ....  19 

CHAPTER  III  ....  33 

CHAPTER  IV  ....  44 

CHAPTER    V  ....  51 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ....  57 


CHAPTER  I. 

I. 

George  Edward  Woodberry,  whose  ancestors,  com- 
ing from  English  Devon,  had  been  among  the  first 
settlers  of  Beverly,  Massachusetts,  was  born  there  in 
the  family  home  facing  the  sea,  on  May  12,  1855 ;  the 
son  of  Henry  Elliott  and  Sarah  Dane  (Tuck)  Wood- 
berry.  The  New  England  tradition  was  his  birth- 
right; and  the  love  of  the  sea,  for  many  of  his  people 
had  been  sea-faring  folk,  and  his  boyhood  was  passed 
where  the  sea-interest  is  greater  than  that  of  the  land. 
Inherited  associations  and  habits  of  thought  form  the 
background  of  any  writer's  work,  whether  he  be  a 
carrier  on  of  the  tradition  in  which  he  was  bred  or  in 
revolt  against  it;  and  any  estimate  of  Mr.  Wood- 
berry's  poetry  must  take  into  account  the  stem  from 
which  it  sprang,  the  roots  deep  in  the  New  England- 
ism  of  other  days  and  the  New  England  sap  which,  as 
his  spiritual  vision  widened,  gave  something  of  its  own 
character  to  the  half -exotic  blossoms  of  his  later  verse. 

The  chronicles  of  The  North  Shore — that  most 
beautiful  part  of  Massachusetts  which  lies  between 
Boston  and  Cape  Ann — are  full  of  the  doings  of  the 
Woodberry  family.  John  Woodberry,  who  came  to 
Salem  in  1626  and  was  an  original  member  of  the  first 
church  there,  was,  with  his  brother  William,  among 
the  four  who  first  established  a  permanent  settlement 
at  Beverly.  In  1635  he  was  granted  a  farm  of  two 
hundred  acres  and  it  is  likely  that  he  or  his  son  was 
one  of  the  interested  petitioners  who  requested  a  few 
years  later  that  the  name  of  the  settlement  be  changed 
for  reasons  of  which  "the  first  is  the  great  dislike  and 

[13] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

discontent  of  many  of  our  people  for  this  name  of 
Beverly,  because  (we  being  but  a  small  place)  it  has 
caused  on  us  a  constant  nickname  of  Beggarly,  being 
in  the  mouths  of  many."  They  seem  to  have  been  a 
godly  lot — these  Woodberrys — founders  and  deacons 
of  churches ;  men  who  were  ready  to  fight  and  die  for 
their  country  when  the  need  came,  and  in  their  daily 
lives  had  to  do  with  the  sea,  building  ships  and  trading. 
Of  such  a  stock  the  poet  came ;  the  love  of  the  sea  is  in 
his  verse — the  color  and  sound  of  it — with  the  New 
England  sense  of  spiritual  and  moral  values,  the  New 
England  seriousness,  and  passion  for  things  of  the  soul. 
After  a  boyhood  spent  in  Beverly  wandering  among 
the  fields  in  search  of  flowers  or  drifting  day-long  on 
the  bay,  Mr.  Woodberry  went  up  to  Harvard,  leaving, 
it  would  seem,  among  his  school-fellows  at  Exeter 
where  he  had  early  identified  himself  with  the  literary 
life,  the  reputation  of  a  poet.  At  Harvard,  Lowell  and 
Charles  Eliot  Norton  quickly  discerned  the  promise  of 
the  lad  and  it  is  said  that  the  former  kept  a  room  at 
his  house  where  young  Woodberry  would  be  welcome 
when  he  wished  to  come.  The  class  oration  which  he 
prepared  for  graduation  was  not  delivered  because 
certain  members  of  the  faculty  feared  that  it  might 
be  misinterpreted  by  the  more  conservative  part  of 
the  audience,  but  was  privately  printed  by  the  Signet 
Society  in  an  edition  of  thirty  copies ;  and  The  Rela- 
tion of  Pallas  Athene  to  Athens  has  become  the  first 
of  those  scarce  little  pamphlets  now  eagerly  sought  by 
collectors.  Graduation  from  Harvard  in  1877  was  fol- 
lowed by  some  years  of  teaching  in  the  University  of 
Nebraska,  of  wandering  in  Southern  Europe,  of  re- 
viewing and  editing,  with  occasional  creative  work  in 
prose  or  in  verse.  In  -1891  Mr.  Woodberry  was 
called  to  Columbia  University  where  he  remained  for 

[141 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

more  than  a  decade  as  head  of  the  department  of 
Comparative  Literature,  winning  among  the  students 
friends  whose  continued  and  peculiar  devotion,  illus- 
trated by  the  recent  formation  of  a  society  to  foster 
his  ideals  in  American  life,  testifies  to  his  power  as  a 
teacher  and  his  unique  influence  as  an  inspiration  to 
the  young.  Since  leaving  Columbia,  he  has  made  his 
home  at  Beverly,  not  connected  with  any  institution 
but  giving  occasional  courses  of  lectures  at  various 
universities,  and  spending  much  of  his  time  in  that 
Mediterranean  world — Southern  Italy  and  Sicily, 
North  Africa,  Greece  and  Asia  Minor — whose  culture 
has  been  a  vitally  important  element  in  his  thought  and 
in  his  work. 

Mr.  Woodberry  has  received  many  academic  honors, 
and  has  written  a  number  of  distinguished  prose  books 
which  rank  with  the  finest  of  modern  interpretative 
criticism ;  but  the  work  that  has  probably  meant  most 
to  him,  and  will  probably  mean  most  to  his  readers,  is 
that  which  the  present  study  is  designed  to  treat,  his 
verse. 

II. 

The  most  constant  characteristics  of  Mr.  Wood- 
berry's  poetry  are  its  insistence  upon  spiritual  values 
and  its  passionateness — the  intensity  of  the  emotion  it 
seeks  to  express.  His  poems,  except  for  a  few  occa- 
sional pieces,  seem  the  record  of  passionate  hope,  of 
passionately  cherished  ideals,  of  disappointment  or 
disillusion  passionately  felt,  and,  in  some  of  his  later 
work,  of  convictions  passionately  held.  He  burns  with 
that  intensity  of  emotion  which  is  characteristic  of 
the  creative  artist ;  but  in  him  the  object  of  passion  is 
two- fold — tragic  opposites  which  are  in  perpetual  con- 
flict. One — the  white  horse  of  the  Phaedrus — is  the 
yearning,  intense  desire  to  remain  perpetually  in  the 

[15] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

ideal,  spiritual  world,  to  realize  it  in  life,  to  bring  it 
to  others ;  its  opposite  is  an  almost  equal  devotion  to 
aspects  of  the  world  of  sense,  an  ecstatic  appreciation 
of  color  and  fragrance,  with  a  fineness  of  perception 
and  rendering  in  the  light  effects  that  suggests  Turner 
or  Shelley.  His  poems  glow  with  color.  Superficially 
he  is  the  poet  of  light,  but  considering  more  deeply, 
one  gets  the  impression  of  a  man  who  had  seen  among 
dark  tree-trunks  a  fitful  gleaming  of  the  Grail,  and, 
having  given  himself  wholly,  passionately  to  the  quest, 
is  unmindful  of  all  save  the  fleeting  vision  and  the 
unattainment.  The  ideal  world  is  one  in  which  many 
spiritually  gifted  people  have  taken  holiday ;  to  some 
it  seems  like  home,  but  there  are  none  who  live  there, 
for  its  children  are  exiles.  A  passionate  devotion  to 
the  things  of  the  spirit,  an  intense  delight  in  visible 
beauty ;  these  are  the  constant  elements  in  Mr.  Wood- 
berry's  poetry ;  the  one  was  fostered  in  him  by  his 
New  England  heritage,  the  other  came  perhaps,  as  it 
has  come  to  so  many  Northern  poets,  a  gift  of  the 
Mediterranean  world.  One  gives  to  his  work  a  back- 
ground of  sad  nobility,  the  other  the  warmth  and  color 
of  life ;  but  to  Mr.  Woodberry  the  two  seem  forces  in 
irreconcilable  conflict,  the  world  that  we  call  "real" 
with  the  world  that  we  call  "ideal". 

Italy,  like  a  dream, 

Unfolds  before  my  eyes; 
But  another  fairer  dream 

Behind  me  lies; 
Could  I  turn  from  the  dream  that  is 

To  where  that  first  light  flies — 
Could  I  turn  from  the  dream  that  was — 

In  a  dream  life  dies! 


16 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

One  masters  the  spirit  of  life 

Through  love  of  life  to  be; 
I  am  not  master,  O  Love, — 

Thou  slayest  the  will  in  me! 
Give  me  the  dream  that  is, — 

Earth  like  heaven  to  see; 
Or  grant  the  dream  that  was, — 

Love's  immortality! 

The  beauty  that  is  seen  lies  open  to  many;  the 
beauty  that  is  "unseen"  is  visible  only  to  a  few,  and  to 
them  merely  in  momentary  glimpses  as  though  a  veil 
had  been  suddenly  lifted  to  drop  as  suddenly  again. 
Literature  records  many  of  these  moments  of  vision, 
and  the  sadness  of  English  poetry  has  largely  to  do 
with  their  passing ;  for  while  most  in  their  youth  have 
had  glimpses  of  the  ideal  world,  it  has  a  way  of  mark- 
ing for  its  own  those  who  are  specially  endowed,  and 
these,  driven  onward  by  an  inner  necessity  follow  the 
gleam  among  the  obstacles  of  life,  through  continued 
unattainment  to  what  should  be,  but  is  not  always,  a 
final  disillusion ;  learning  that  in  the  world  we  know 
the  wings  of  the  spirit  can  never  be  wholly  free. 
Many  poets,  especially  those  whose  habit  of  mind  fitted 
them  to  receive  the  Platonic  idealism,  have  treated 
the  subject,  but  in  the  work  of  only  a  few  is  the 
record  of  the  vision  and  its  passing,  the  quest,  the 
disillusion,  so  preeminent  a  part  as  it  is  in  Mr.  Wood- 
berry's.  This  is  the  golden  thread  which  a  critic  must 
follow  in  order  to  find  the  spiritual  and  the  poetic 
value  of  the  work  under  consideration;  the  technique, 
and  that  glow  of  color  in  the  pages  which  makes  many 
of  the  poems  seem  as  though  they  had  been  bathed  in 
light,  are  less  important  subjects  of  discussion,  though 
all  are  correlated  and  work  together  to  produce  the 
total  effect. 

[17] 


GEORGE     EDWARD     WOODBERRY 
III. 

Another  trait  which  is  obvious  in  Mr.  Woodberry's 
work,  and  which  it  may  be  as  well  to  examine  before 
following  our  golden  thread,  is  the  growing  externality 
of  his  interests.  The  early  poems,  as  is  natural,  are 
chiefly  concerned  with  the  individual,  the  moods  of 
the  soul  and  its  reactions;  but  through  them  there 
runs  a  desire  to  be  of  service  to  the  race,  a- conviction 
of  destiny  that  will  make  the  personal  soul  an  active 
agent  in  bringing  a  better  world.  In  considering  Mr. 
Woodberry's  poetry  chronologically  this  thought  is 
seen  to  develop  until  the  chief  interest  is  outside  of  the 
individual  who  comes  finally  to  be  conceived  as  merely 
a  part  of  a  whole — a  single  pulsation  in  the  rhythm  of 
the  universe,  rather  than  as  an  entity  self-bounded  and 
self-sufficient.  The  change  is  paralleled  by  a  growth 
from  purely  personal  feeling  for  New  England  and 
that  older  England  from  which  it  sprang,  through  the 
Americanism  of  My  Country  and  certain  of  the  son- 
nets, to  an  enthusiasm  for  what  might  be  called  world- 
citizenship  without  nationality ;  a  conviction  of  abso- 
lute equality  and  brotherhood  that  leads  to  an  almost 
Franciscan  devotion  to  the  outcast  and  the  humble. 
This  is  part  of  the  working  out  of  a  philosophy,  of  the 
reaction  of  life  itself  upon  the  ideal  of  life,  and  will 
be  discussed  later ;  now  it  is  time  to  turn  to  the  poems 
themselves. 


18 


CHAPTER  II. 
I. 

The  volume  of  collected  poems  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1903  contains  most  of  the  pieces  which  had 
appeared  in  two  earlier  books  and  a  number  which  had 
not  previously  been  published  in  book  form.  Near 
the  front  of  this  volume  is  an  early  poem  which  Mr. 
Woodberry  has  referred  to  elsewhere  as  the  "cry  of 
dying  boyhood,"  and  which,  though  it  is  not  so  uni- 
formly felicitous  in  expression  as  some  others,  shows 
clearly  through  images  of  the  northern  lights  the 
poetic  mood  we  have  attempted  to  describe.  Like  the 
false  dawn  of  those  flashing  lights  is  the  dream  in  the 
heart  of  a  boy,  youth's  aspiration  toward  the  ideal 
world,  youth's  glowing  trust  in  the  things  of  the  spirit ; 
and  like  it  also  is  the  subsequent  disillusion  when  the 
young  soul  perceives  by  the  dying  glow  of  its  own  fire 
the  broken  dreams  and  hopes  which  were  the  sword 
and  shield  of  its  chivalry.  When  youth  lies  wounded, 
it  does  not  know  that  wounds  may  heal,  and  the  poem 
is  a  poem  of  youth,  true  to  the  mood  and  repetitive  of 
an  ancient  cry. 

FALSE  DAWN; 

God  dreamt  a  dream  ere  the  morning  woke 

Or  ever  the  stars  sang  out; 
The  glory,  although  it  never  broke, 
Filled  heaven  zvith  a  golden  shout; 

And' when  in  the  North  there's  a  quiver  and  beam 
Of  mystical  lights  that  heavenward  stream, 
The  heart  of  a  boy  will  dream  God's  dream. 

F191 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

O  Norns,  who  sit  by  the  pale  sea's  capes, 

Loosen  the  wonderful  shine! 
The  glamour  of  God  hath  a  thousand  shapes 
And  every  one  divine. 

Dartle  and  listen  o'er  the  blue  height; 
Drift  and  shimmer,  flight  on  flight; 
The  heart  of  a  boy  is  God's  delight. 

O,  clamber  and  weave  with  the  Milky  Way 

The  Rose  in  the  East  that  sprang, 
From  star  to  star,  with  blossom  and  spray, 
On  heaven's  gates  to  hang! 

O  Vine  of  the  Morning,  cling  and  climb, 

Till  the  stars  like  birds  in  your  branches  chime! 

The  heart  of  a  boy  is  God's  springtime. 

'Tis  dawn  that  shadows  the  glowing  roof! 

'Tis  Light  with  the  Dragon  strives! 
Ah,  Night's  black  warp  with  the  rainbow-woof 
The  shuttle  of  Destiny  drives. 

They  swerve  and  falter,  gather  and  fly, 
Wane,  and  shiver,  and  slip  from  the  sky — 
O  Norns,  is  the  heart  of  a  boy  God's  lief 

O  Childless  Ones,  would  your  blind  charms 

Might  seal  our  darling's  eyes! 
Dead,  with  the  dead  Da^vn  in  his  arms, 
In  the  pale  north  Light  lies. 

Glimmer  and  glint,  O  fallen  fire! 
The  lights  of  heaven  like  ghosts  expire; 
The  heart  of  a  boy  is  God's  desire. 
[20] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 


O  dream  God  dreamt  ere  the  morning  woke 

Or  ever  the  stars  sang  out; 
O  glory  diviner  than  ever  broke, 

Of  the  false,  false  dawn  the  shout! 
False  dawn,  false  dawn,  false  dawn — 

Alas,  when  God  shall  wake! 
False  dawn,  false  dawn,  false  dawn — 

Alas,  our  young  mistake! 
False  dawn,  false  dawn,  false  dawn — 

O  heart  betrayed,  break,  break! 

It  may  be  said  in  passing  that  Mr.  Woodberry  seems 
always  to  have  had  a  special  feeling  for  youth.  His 
books  contain  a  little  gallery  of  portraits  of  children — 
the  child  who  touched  him  in  the  city  street,  the  Ionian 
boy,  the  orphans  found  wandering  at  Delphi,  and  a 
whole  row  of  young  Sicilians,  all  of  whom  are  seen  so 
vividly  against  their  backgrounds  as  to  suggest  an  un- 
usual sense  of  contour  and  color  in  the  author. 

Boy  on  the  almond  bough, 

Clinging  against  the  wind, 
A-sway  from  foot  to  brow, 

With  the  emerald  sea  behind; — 

Could  a  picture  be  painted  more  deftly?  Obviously 
the  man  who  writes  such  lines  as  these  has  a  feeling 
for  children;  and  in  his  treatment  of  them  there  are 
notes  of  reverence  and  of  sadness,  a  somewhat 
Platonic  or  Wordsworthian  reverence  for  the  young 
heart  in  which  the  golden  dream  still  lives,  and  the 
sadness  of  one  who,  resting  his  hand  on  a  child's  head, 
thinks  of  the  lessons  that  must  be  learned,  the  griefs 
that  must  be  endured. 

[21] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 
II. 

Something  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  own  youth,  of  value 
to  us  because  its  moods  are  a  part  of  common  ex- 
perience, can  be  seen  in  The  North  Shore  Watch,  an 
elegy  for  the  friend  with  whom  much  of  his  boyhood  at 
Beverly  had  been  passed.  The  poem  was  first  printed 
(in  a  subscription  edition  of  two  hundred  copies) 
while  the  poet  was  still  in  his  twenties,  but  it  is  one 
that  has  been  given  high  praise  and  that  shows  with 
his  native  idealism  that  colorfulness  of  expression, 
that  sense  of  sea-backgrounds,  which  have  been  noted 
as  among  the  external  characteristics  of  his  work. 
It  is  typical  of  the  poetry  of  youth  with  its  references 
to  field  excursions  and  to  boating,  its  sense  of  intimate 
comradeship  with  nature,  its  exaltation  of  friendship, 
and  in  the  poignancy  of  its  grief  for  the  loss  of  one 
who  wa~s 

First  dead  of  all  my  dead  that  are  to  be. 

Young  also  in  its  idealism  and  in  its  recoil  at  the  reve- 
lation of  phases  of  life  first  revealed  at  the  close  of 
boyhood,  the  poem  moves  forward  through  a  succes- 
sion of  sea-pictures  and  glimpses  of  the  pine-hung 
Northern  Shore,  seen  at  dawn  or  sunset  when  "pools 
of  opal  gem  the  windless  bay,"  or  when,  wrapped  in 
more  mysterious  umbrage, 

.  .  .  the  dark  pines,  -whose  heart  is  like  the  sea's, 
Mourn  for  one  darling  flower  they  nurtured  here. 

The  solution  of  the  poem  is  Shelleyean:  Through 
love  "we  look  toward  life  with  conquering  eyes" ;  and 
in  it  is  expressed  a  faith  in  the  endurance  of  Beauty, 
a  conviction  of  the  things  that  are  seen  being  merely 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

temporal,  and  those  that  are  unseen  eternal,  which, 
though  with  many  it  is  a  passing  mood  of  youth  illus- 
trating the  natural  affinity  between  the  young  soul  and 
the  doctrines  of  Platonic  idealism,  is  in  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  the  first  expression  of  a  belief  passionately  held 
or  clung  to  with  passionate  regret.  The  North  Shore 
Watch  is  a  poem  of  youth,  young  in  its  idealism  and 
in  its  melancholy;  and  it  is  one  to  which  the  heart 
of  youth  makes  quick  response — a  twilight  thing  with 
the  colors  of  the  north  in  it,  untouched  as  yet  by 
Mediterranean  splendor,  though  already  reaching  out 
in  imagination  to  that  more  vivid  eastern  world  where 
the  friend  for  whom  the  poet  mourns  had  gone  in 
the  glow  of  his  own  youth  and  found  darkness. 

What  though  o'er  him  the  tropic  sunset  bloom, 
With  hyacinthine  hues  and  sanguine  dyes, 

And  down  the  central  deep's  profoundest  gloom 
Soft  blossoms,  fallen  from  the  wreathed  skies, 
The  seas  imparadisef 

With  light  immingling,  colors,  dipped  in  May, 
Through  multitudinous  changes  still  endure — 
Orange  and  unimagined  emeralds  pure 
Drift  through  the  softened  day; 

"Alas"  he  zvhispers,  "and  art  thou  not  nigh? 

Earth  reaches  now  her  height  of  beauty  ere  I  die." 

Extended  quotation  is  unnecessary,  but  the  stanzas 
which  lead  to  the  final  landscape  pictures  may  be  given 
as  expressing  the  intellectual  conclusions  of  the  poem 
and  as  sufficiently  illustrative  of  the  verse  movement: 

Beauty  abides,  nor  suffers  mortal  change, 
Eternal  refuge  of  the  orphaned  mind; 
Where'er  a  lonely  wanderer,  I  range, 

[231 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

The  tender  flowers  shall  my  woes  unbind, 

The  grass  to  me  be  kind; 
And  lovely  shapes  innumerable  shall  throng 
On  sea  and  prairie,  soft  as  children's  eyes; 
Morn  shall  awake  me  with  her  glad  surprise; 

The  stars  shall  hear  my  song; 
And  heaven  shall  I  see,  whatever  my  road, 
Steadfast,  eternal,  life's  impregnable  abode. 

Love,  too,  abides,  and  smiles  at  savage  death, 

And  swifter  speeds  his  might  and  shall  endure; 
The  secret  flame,  the  unimagined  breath, 
That  lives  in  all  things  beautiful  and  pure, 

Invincibly  secure; 

In  Him  creation  hath  its  glorious  birth, 
Subsists,  rejoices,  moves  prophetic  on, 
Till  that  dim  goal  of  all  things  shall  be  won 

Men  yearn  for  through  the  earth; 
Voices  that  pass  we  are  of  Him,  the  Song, 
Whose  harmonies  the  winds,  the  stars,  the  seas,  pro- 
long. 

III. 

Agathon,  a  dramatic  poem  first  published  in  the 
volume  of  1890,  but  privately  printed  before  that  by 
some  of  his  devoted  students  at  the  University  of 
Nebraska,  is  Mr.  Woodberry's  first  extended  treat- 
ment of  the  theme  that  has  haunted  him  life-long, — 
the  conflict  in  the  soul  between  love  of  the  beauty 
that  is  perceived  by  the  senses  and  that  which  is 
perceived  by  the  spirit,  youth's  final  rejection  of 
what  is  transient,  and  definite  self -consecration  to  the 
ideal,  despite  the  earthly  hopelessness  of  such  service : 

The  love  that  mates  with  heaven  weds  in  the  grave. 
[241 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

This  poem  takes  us  at  once  into  the  heart  of  philo- 
sophic idealism ;  it  expresses  a  definite  philosophy  of 
life,  and  while  with  many  poets  criticism  could  confine 
itself  mainly  to  the  pointing  out  of  external  poetic 
excellencies — the  beauties  of  phrase  and  music — in 
Mr.  Woodberry's  work  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
elements  are  so  important  that  more  attention  must 
be  given  to  what  he  has  to  say  than  to  how  he  says  it. 
When  the  subject  matter  of  poetry  is  essentially  poetic 
the  manner  of  its  expression  takes  immediately  its 
proper  place  of  secondary  importance.  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  has  the  technical  mastery  of  his  art,  and,  what 
is  far  more,  he  has  that  peculiar  ability  to  make 
magical  haunting  phrases,  lines  that  remain  in  the 
memory ;  to  evoke  pictures  with  a  word,  to  illumine 
by  sudden  flashes  of  insight,  which  is  essential  to 
poetry. 

The  deeper  elements  in  such  a  poem  as  Agathon  give 
expression  to  thoughts  and  experiences  which,  though 
usually  realized  less  intensely,  are  common  to  the  more 
sensitive  natures  among  mankind,  and  make  a  direct 
human  appeal,  recalling  to  the  reader  his  own  past 
phases  of  consciousness  when  life  was  all  ahead  and 
the  soul  stood  confident  in  unstained  armor.  Looked 
back  to,  there  is  pathos  about  these  moods — the  pathos 
of  Richard  II.  deposed  by  Bolingbroke.  The  percep- 
tion of  impermanence  in  the  world,  the  decay  of  love, 
the  fading  of  beauty,  is  that  which  often  enough  gives 
the  first  rude  shock  of  awakening;  the  world  we  knew 
or  thought  we  knew  is  gone,  and  in  its  stead  is  a 
universe  in  which  life  is  but  a  dream  in  the  night  of 
death,  a  moment's  glow  in  the  northern  sky ;  beauty 
a  malign  phase  of  transitoriness  and  love  an  emblem 
of  mockery.  The  virgin  arms  are  stained,  and  after 
their  first  defeat  few  are  able  to  see  again  the  gleaming 

[251 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

of  the  Grail.  Most  are  absorbed,  during  the  later 
years,  by  the  daily  routine  of  life,  seeing  only  what 
is  about  them,  desiring  only  the  things  of  this  world; 
"but  some  whose  eyes  were  more  divinely  touched" 
carry  with  them  to  the  end  a  sense  of  exile,  a  nos- 
talgia for  the  land  across  whose  borders  the  eyes  of 
boyhood  looked  when  mists  closed  in  and  the  vision 
was  blotted  from  all  but  memory.  For  such,  the  clouds 
are  occasionally  lifted,  and  for  them  the  value  of  life 
lies  wholly  in  the  frequency  and  duration  of  the 
moments  of  vision  when  the  soul  feels  its  wings,  and, 
in  the  radiance  of  the  eternal,  sees  once  more  a  world 
of  permanence  and  of  spiritual  values — an  ideal  world 
which  is  realized  to  be  of  greater  actuality  than  the 
transitory  phenomena  perceived  daily  by  the  senses. 
It  is  only  the  ideal  that  has  actual  reality. 

The  machinery  of  the  poem,  which  is  simple  enough 
to  one  who  has  even  a  rudimentary  knowledge  of 
Platonic  thought  and  imagery,  is  lucidly  explained  in 
the  Argument,  but  the  peculiar  success  of  it  is  that  a 
poem  so  burdened  with  philosophic  meaning  is  never 
overweighted.  It  has  the  glow  of  spring  upon  it — a 
richer  spring  turning  to  summer;  it  expresses  the 
nobility  of  youth — such  youth  Plato  must  have  had 
when  he  walked  with  his  master,  or  as,  when  death 
had  claimed  him,  his  friends  thought  of  in  Sir  Philip 
Sidney — clear-eyed  and  familiar  with  the  stars.  It 
has  the  same  lovely  landscapes,  though  here  they  are 
of  the  Mediterranean  world,  but  it  has  a  richer  music 
than  that  of  The  North  Shore  Watch,  a  greater  power 
of  verbal  evocation,  a  more  mature  technique  and  mas- 
tery of  line  and  phrase.  There  are  many  things  in 
Agathon  which  have  not  been  touched  on  in  this  brief 
resume,  much  observation  of  life,  much  wisdom ;  but, 
like  its  predecessor,  it  is  a  subjective,  what  might  be 

[261 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

called  a  centripetal  poem,  the  author's  interest  being 
still  drawn  inward,  and  directed  mainly  toward  the 
relation  between  the  individual  and  the  universe,  or 
rather  toward  the  effect  of  the  universe  on  the  person. 
Only  in  his  later  work  does  the  interest  broaden  until 
individual  experience  is  seen  merely  as  a  pulsation  in 
the  eternal  rhythm — a  falling  wave  which  though  dis- 
tinguishable for  a  moment,  lives  only  as  part  of  an 
infinite  whole,  a  manifestation  of  something  greater 
than  itself. 

IV. 

The  group  of  lyrics  gathered  together  under  the 
collective  title  of  Wild  Eden  and  first  published  in 
1899  form  a  distinctly  different  part  of  the  volume 
under  consideration  and  represent  to  many  the  height 
of  Mr.  Woodberry's  achievement.  Wild  Eden  is  the 
poet's  tribute  to  the  beauty  of  the  earth.  In  these 
lyrics,  the  two  opposing  forces  which  the  first  quoted 
poem  described  as  in  conflict,  seem  to  have  ceased  for 
a  time  contending  for  the  poet's  allegiance ;  the  love 
of  the  beauty  that  is  seen  fills  and  satisfies  him,  what 
might  be  called  his  ascetism  appearing  only  in  occa- 
sional moods  of  regret  or  self-reproach.  In  the  main 
they  are  exquisite  love-poems,  almost  touching  in  their 
tenderness  and  spirituality ;  or  nature-poems  written 
by  one  who  knows  whereof  he  speaks  and  who  has 
loved  the  out-of-doors  in  all  weathers :  The  bat  and 
the  humming  bird  are  dear  to  him ;  he  has  watched 
devotedly  through  sunlit,  musing  hours  the  bees  in 
the  linden's  bloom,  the  garden  flowers ;  he  has  known 
the  exhilaration  of  the  storm  and  reveled  in  the  might 
of  the  sea. 

The  daily  aspects  of  nature  come  to  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  with  the  vividness  of  a  revelation;  he  brings 
that  emotional  intensity  which  has  been  noted  as  a 

[27] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

characteristic,  to  all  that  he  feels  or  sees,  and  the 
lyrics  seem  to  spring  spontaneously  from  his  lips  as 
though  the  emotion  that  was  in  him  forced  him  to 
find  unpremeditated  relief  in  the  creative  act. 

A  voice  in  the  roaring  pine  wood, 

A  voice  in  the  breaking  sea, 
A  voice  in  the  storm-red  morning, 

That  will  not  let  me  be. 

Might  in  the  pine  wood  tossing, 

Might  on  the  racing  sea, 
The  Weather-spirit,  my  brother, 

Is  calling,  calling  to  me. 

These  are  not  the  words  of  a  mystic  or  of  one  who 
has  given  himself  wholly  to  the  far  glimmer  of  the 
Grail. 

The  love-poems  have  the  charm  and  color  of  slow 
twilights,  the  delicacy  of  April,  they  are  not  things  of 
the  summer  noon;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  repre- 
sent them  by  quotation,  for  their  effect  is  cumulative 
like  that  which  comes  through  praying  generations  to 
a  cathedral,  giving  in  the  end  a  sense  of  spiritual  pres- 
ence there.  Some  of  them  leave  an  impression  of  alle- 
gorical significance  as  though  the  Maiden  described 
were,  like  the  Lady  of  Shelley's  Sensitive  Plant,  an 
incarnation  of  the  ideal ;  but  most  are  direct  enough 
and  one  will  serve  as  well  as  another  to  give  the  type. 

THE  ROSE. 
O  love's  star  over  Eden, 

How  pale  and  faint  thou  art! 
Now  lost,  now  seen  above, 

Thy  white  rays  point  and  dart. 

[281 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

O,  liquid  o'er  her  move, 

Shine  out  and  take  my  part! 
I  have  sent  her  the  rose  of  love, 

And  shut  in  the  rose  is  tny  heart. 

The  fireflies  glitter  and  rush 

In  the  dark  of  the  summer  mead; 
Pale  on  the  hawthorn  bush, 

Bright  on  the  larkspur  seed ; 
And  long  is  heaven  aflush 

To  give  my  rose  god-speed; 
If  she  breathe  a  kiss,  it  will  blush; 

If  she  bruise  a  leaf,  it  will  bleed. 

O  bright  star  over  Eden, 

All  beautiful  thou  art; 
To-day,  in  the  rose,  the  rose, 

For  my  love  I  have  perilled  my  heart; 
Now,  ere  the  dying  glows 

From  the  placid  isles  depart, 
The  rose-bathed  planet  knows 

It  is  hers,  my  rose,  my  heart! 

No  matter  how  rapt  the  poet's  delight  in  the  things 
of  earth  may  be,  the  sense  of  their  transitoriness,  the 
perception  of  that  eternal  world  whose  beauty  fades 
not,  neither  passes  away,  is  never  long  in  abeyance. 
Even  in  Wild  Eden  it  comes  on  him  occasionally  and 
one  other  poem  from  the  group  must  be  quoted,  partly 
because  it  shows  curiously  the  sense  of  the  eternal 
coming  in  the  midst  of  an  ecstatic  appreciation  of 
the  temporal — the  two  being  not  in  conflict,  but  the 
one,  as  it  were,  a  means  of  ascent  to  the  other — and 
partly  because  it  illustrates,  if  our  theory  be  correct, 
that  gift  which  his  Mediterranean  experiences  gave 

[29] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

the  author.  The  poem  is  luminous ;  it  is  bathed  in 
light  and  color — the  color  of  Sorolla,  not  of  Corot — 
and  its  climax  in  the  word  "incandescent"  is  one  that 
no  other  writer  would  have  been  apt  to  reach  with 
such  telling  effectiveness.  The  landscape,  which  prob- 
ably to  the  poet  was  of  New  England,  suggests  rather 
to  the  reader  some  garden  above  Naples  on  a  sum- 
mer noon ;  it  has  the  glow  and  color  of  the  South,  the 
light  in  which  sculpture  should  be  seen  and  which  has 
made  the  sculptor's  art  a  southern  one  as  that  of  the 
painter  is  northern.  In  its  thought  as  in  its  picture, 
this  poem  is  peculiarly  characteristic  of  Mr.  Wood- 
bery. 

THE  ROSE  BOWER. 
A  crimson  bower  the  garden  glows, 
In  overhanging  noon,  intense  and  bare, 
Enisled  and  bathed  in  silence  and  repose. 
As  it  were  mirrored  on  the  azure  air; 
All  molten  lies  the  faint  blue-shimmering  deep, 
Impalpably  transparent,  smooth  with  light; 
Far  in  the  fragrant  pines  the  hot  winds  sleep; 
And  nothing  moves,  and  all  dark  things  are  bright. 
Yet  is  this  fair  round  of  tranquillity, 
This  swathe  of  color,  wheresoe'er  it  be, 
The  burning  shell  of  elemental  strife; 
And  never  yet  so  fleeting  seemed  sweet  life; 
So  fragile  this  thin  film  of  human  eyes, 
In  whose  slight  orb  are  springtime  and  sunrise; 
So  perishable  this  incandescent  frame, 
Lone  Nature's  inextinguishable  pyre 
Of  transitory  loveliness  and  bliss, — 
This  undulating  and  eternal  flame 
Of  beauty  burning  in  its  perfumed  fire, 
And  passion  dying  in  its  tropic  kiss. 

[301 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

Even  now  the  sweet-hued  vision  sinks  away, 
And  from  these  bathing  flames  of  night  and  day, 
As  in  my  hour  to  come  it  soon  may  seem 
When  fades  to  ashes  earth's  majestic  dream, 
My  soul  springs  up  erect,  alone,  supreme, 
And,  passing  from  this  glory,  doth  survey, 
As  some  spent  meteor's  low  and  dying  gleam, 
This  radiant  life  that  burns  all  else  away, 
Consuming  its  own  star;   a  moment,  where 
About  my  feet  morning  and  evening  flare, 
My  spirit  gazes,  still  a  stranger  there, 
On  this  dear  human  home,  so  szveet,  so  fair, 
Nor  yet  unfolds  aloft  eternal  wings. 
Then  slowly  lapsing  into  sensuous  things, 
Once  more  do  I  inhale  this  glorious  light, 
Breathe  the  soft  air  and  feel  the  flowering  earth, 
And  on  me  comes  the  everlasting  sea, 
Purple  horizons,  emerald-hanging  woods, 
The  rose  bower,  and  love's  blissful  solitudes, 
Where  voices  of  eternity 
Have  wandered  from  my  birth, 
And  nothing  save  love's  mystery 
Shines  with  immortal  worth. 
V. 

Beside  The  North  Shore  Watch,  Agathon,  the  Wild 
Eden  lyrics  and  the  two  others  which  have  been 
quoted,  the  volume  under  consideration  contains  a 
number  of  miscellaneous  poems,  some  of  which  were 
written  for  occasions  such  as  the  Emerson  Centenary 
Service,  and  the  memorial  to  the  author's  friend, 
Edwin  Booth.  Many  of  these — particularly  the  patri- 
otic sonnets — are  very  fine,  but  some  seem  rather 
perfunctory  and  uninspired.  None  need  detain  us 
here.  Mr.  Woodberry  is  a  poet  of  the  inspirational 
type;  the  effectiveness  of  his  work  is  largely  de- 

[31] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

pendent  upon  the  complete  fusion  of  the  emotional 
and  intellectual  elements  that  are  in  him,  and  upon  the 
apparent  spontaneity  with  which  he  sets  down  what 
an  inner  necessity  seems  to  compel  him  to  express ; 
when  the  fusion  is  less  than  perfect  or  when  expres- 
sion is  compelled  by  an  external  rather  than  an  inward 
necessity  the  resulting  product  loses  in  poetic  quality. 
He  would  have  made  a  poor  laureate. 

Up  to  this  period  of  his  career,  Mr.  Woodberry 
was  of  the  nineteenth  century;  his  work,  at  least  in 
externals,  being  a  last,  late  bloom  of  that  summer 
which  had  produced  Tennyson,  Arnold  and  Swin- 
burne, though  in  his  habits  of  mind  he  seemed  more 
nearly  akin,  among  English  poets,  to  Wordsworth  and 
Shelley.  The  publication  of  the  collected  volume  of 
1903  was  followed  by  some  years  of  poetic  silence  and 
when  Mr.  Woodberry  spoke  again  he  used  a  new 
language.  The  thought  in  his  earlier  work  has  de- 
veloped rather  than  changed  its  direction,  the  emo- 
tional element  has  merely  grown  more  intense,  but 
in  externals  his  later  poetry  is  as  distinctly  of  the 
twentieth  century  as  the  earlier  is  of  the  century  that 
has  passed.  That  which  is  of  importance  in  the  work 
of  any  poet,  all  that  gives  it  its  essential  value,  is  inde- 
pendent of  time  and  place,  as  true  to  New  York  as 
to  Athens,  to  the  twentieth  century  as  to  the  first; 
and  it  does  not  matter  when  or  where  or  how  a  poem 
was  written ;  only  the  garment  of  poetry  changes,  only 
the  fashion  and  semblance  of  it ;  and  this  is  a  fact 
which  must  never  be  forgotten.  The  essential  human 
problems  and  experiences  are  what  they  were  two 
thousand  years  ago,  and  the  sea  comes  to  the  shore 
exactly  as  it  did  when  Homer  knew  it.  The  manner 
of  a  poem  may  be  of  the  twentieth  century  or  of  the 
renaissance,  the  matter  of  it,  if  it  be  a  good  poem, 
is  eternal. 

[32] 


CHAPTER   III. 

I. 

The  Flight  and  Other  Poems,  a  collection  of  about 
fifty  new  pieces,  none  of  which  is  very  long,  was  pub- 
lished in  1914  after  an  interval  of  eleven  years.  The 
intellectual  content  of  many  of  these  poems,  and  Mr. 
Woodberry  delivers  his  message  with  earnest  convic- 
tion of  its  truth,  is  based  not  on  reason  but  in  faith, 
and  apparently  is  derived  from  a  series  of  intuitive 
glimpses  into  the  heart  of  the  universe  that  are  like 
the  moments  of  illumination  with  which  the  records  of 
mysticism  abound.  He  likewise  shows  himself  en- 
dowed with  a  faculty  which  might  be  called  "cosmic 
consciousness,"  a  perception  through  feeling  or  intui- 
tion of  the  intimate  unity  of  life  in  all  its  manifesta- 
tions and  without  regard  to  sequence  in  time.  If  we 
read  him  correctly,  each  personal  soul  is  merely  a 
manifestation  of  the  race-soul,  and  consequently  all 
are  essentially  equal.  It  is  the  poignant  realization 
of  this  absolute  equality  and  brotherhood  of  men, 
whatever  may  be  the  accidents  of  time  and  circum- 
stance, that  kindles  many  of  these  poems ;  and  as 
the  life-spirit  itself  is  eternal  the  message  of  the  book 
is  one  of  passionate  hope  and  joy.  We  can  afford  to 
forget  our  mistakes,  to  forget  the  actual  pathos  and 
tragedy  of  life,  for  we  are  only  at  the  beginning; 
eternity  is  before  us,  we  must  spend  no  time  in  mourn- 
ing or  repentance,  but  must  look  forward;  and  the 
poet  is  raised  to  ecstasy  in  contemplation  of  the  youth 
and  hope  with  which  the  universe  is  instinct.  The 
stars  above  the  desert  sing  to  him : 

[33] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

"We  sit  in  our  burning  spheres 

inimitably  hung; 

By  the  speed  of  light  we  measure  the  years 
On  purple  ether  flung; 

Without  a  shadow  time  appears, 
A  calendar  of  echoing  lights 
That  flame  and  dusk  from  depths  and  heights, 
And  all  our  years  are  young. 

"We  gaze  on  the  far  flood  flowing 

Unimaginably  free, 
Multitudinous,  mystical,  glowing, 
But  all  we  do  not  see; 

And  a  rapture  is  all  our  knowing, 
That  on  fiery  nerves  comes  stealing, 
An  intimate  revealing 
That  all  is  yet  to  be." 

Much  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  poetry,  as  was  suggested 
above,  is  the  record  of  a  passionate  search  of  the  soul 
for  satisfaction,  and  in  the  book  now  under  considera- 
tion there  are  many  descriptions  of  the  quest.  For- 
tunately, the  author's  utterances  are  nothing  if  not  dis- 
tinct, and  we  can  summarize  briefly :  The  pursuit  of 
beauty  leads  nowhere,  and  duty,  which  is  ordinary 
morality,  fails  to  give  satisfaction;  these  things  are 
of  the  earth,  earthy.  Learning  and  wealth,  as  the 
Poverello  of  Assisi  taught  long  ago,  are  the  fetters 
of  the  soul  and  must  be  set  aside  with  all  other 
conventional  standards,  for  complete  spiritual  free- 
dom is  essential  to  self-realization.  It  is  only  by  mak- 
ing the  brotherhood  of  man  a  standard  of  action 
rather  than  a  merely  theoretic  creed ;  by  feeling  pas- 
sionately the  absolute  equality  of  all  men  as  sharers 
in  the  race-spirit;  by  forgetting  our  conventional 

[341 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

values  and  going  as  their  peer  among  the  lowly  and 
the  outcast,  as  St.  Francis  did,  that  we  can  satisfy 
the  soul  by  bringing  it  once  more  into  harmony  with 
that  which  is  eternal  and  essential.  There  are  many 
lyrics  about  children,  for  children  are  spiritually  free. 

By  no  means  all  of  the  poems  in  the  collection  are 
burdened  with  the  meanings  that  have  been  outlined 
above.  Many  present  their  moods  simply ;  but  even 
the  ones  most  heavily  freighted  with  philosophic  or 
humanitarian  ideas  are  saved  from  the  slightest  ap- 
pearance of  didacticism  by  the  close  fusion  of  the 
intellectual  element  with  that  strong  emotion  which 
is  the  basis  of  each  and  all.  The  settings  are  of  the 
Mediterranean  world,  in  Greece  or  Italy,  Sicily  or 
North  Africa,  and  many  of  the  poems  have  that  glow 
of  color  which  is  characteristic  of  their  author's  work. 

As  poetry  the  simpler  pieces  are  perhaps  the  more 
successful,  for  in  some  of  the  others  the  author  is 
so  filled  with  what  he  wishes  to  express  that  he  occa- 
sionally forgets  his  artistry ;  such  poems  lack  the  ex- 
ternal poetic  graces  and  impress  the  reader  rather  as 
spontaneous  outpourings  than  as  the  expression  of  ar- 
tistically controlled  emotion — as  Dionysiac  rather  than 
Apollonian  forms  of  art — but  there  is  a  strange  power 
in  them  all,  a  vividness  of  imagination  and  intensity 
of  emotion  that  make  the  book,  whether  one  likes  it 
or  not,  unique.  The  volume  is  divided  into  three  sec- 
tions, the  third  of  which,  though  it  contains  much 
charming  verse,  need  not  concern  us  greatly,  the  first 
two  being  of  far  more  importance  to  such  a  study 
as  this. 

II. 

The  first  part  of  the  1914  volume  contains,  beside 
the  poems  descriptive  of  North  Africa  many  of  which 
are  based  on  that  perception  which  has  been  spoken 

[35] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

of  as  "cosmic  consciousness,"  and  some  of  which  are 
certainly  as  fine  as  anything  in  the  book,  the  philo- 
sophic poems,  a  general  idea  of  which  has  already 
been  given.  From  these  the  tone  of  the  whole  volume 
is  derived  and  to  them  the  golden  thread  which  we 
have  followed  leads.  They  give  further  record  of 
that  quest,  that  search  for  a  realization  of  the  eternal 
in  the  temporal,  to  which  the  poet  has  devoted  him- 
self, but  they  seem  also  to  record  an  actual  attainment. 
In  his  earlier  work  he  was — to  use  a  wholly  irrelevant 
image — like  a  man  who  being  lost  at  night  desires 
very  earnestly  to  reach  home  but  has  no  idea  of  how 
to  get  there ;  now  he  has  found  the  way.  It  is  not 
a  New  England  lane ;  nor  is  it  a  path  liable  to 
grow  dusty  with  much  travel,  for  he  who  would  walk 
therein  must  first  set  aside  all  conventions,  deny  aes- 
thetic and  moral  values, — Hebraism  and  Hellenism — 
the  appreciation  of  beauty  in  the  ordinary  meanings 
of  the  word,  and  that  sense  of  duty  which  is  a  tradi- 
tional inheritance  and  frequently  has  no  basis  in  rea- 
son. To  him  who  has  discarded  all  these  and  finds 
himself  without  trammels,  both  mentally  and  spirit- 
ually free,  the  path  is  short  and  leads  to  that  "King- 
dom of  All-Souls"  where  men  are  realized  to  be  in 
absolute  equality,  and  democracy  reaches  its  logical 
conclusion.  Although  to  the  few  this  path  is  a  way  of 
salvation,  it  is  one  that  it  might  be  unwise  for  many 
to  follow ;  but  the  philosophic  conception,  which  is 
somewhat  Nietzchean  as  well  as  somewhat  Franciscan, 
is,  in  a  man  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  preeminent  spirit- 
uality, one  of  peculiar  nobility  and  loftiness.  The  au- 
thor's command  of  technique  is  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that  he  has  expressed  his  ideas  in  lyrical  stanzas  of 
perfect  lucidity  that  contain  many  elements  of  pic- 
torial and  poetic  value. 

[361 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

We  were  past  the  good  and  the  evil, 

In  the  spirit's  uttermost  dark; 
He  is  neither  god  nor  devil 

For  whom  my  heart-beats  hark ; 
And  I  leaned  my  cheek  to  my  horse's  neck, 

And  I  sang  to  his  ear  in  the  dark: 
"There  is  neither  good  nor  evil, 
There  is  neither  god  nor  devil, 

And  our  way  lies  on  through  the  dark. 

"I  have  never  heard  it  or  learnt  it, 

It  is  in  me  like  my  soul, 
And  the  sights  of  this  world  have  burnt  it 

In  me  to  a  living  coal, — 
The  soul  of  man  is  a  masterless  thing 

And  bides  not  another's  control; 
And  gypsy-broods  of  bandit-loins 
Shall  teach  what  the  lawless  life  enjoins 

Upon  the  lawless  soul. 

"When  we  dare  neither  to  loose  nor  to  bind, 

However  to  us  things  appear; 
When  whatsoever  in -others  we  find, 

We  shall  feel  neither  shame  nor  fear; 
When  we  learn  that  to  love  the  lowliest 

We  must  first  salute  him  our  peer; 
When  the  basest  is  most  our  brother, 
And  we  neither  look  down  on  nor  up  to  another, — 

The  end  of  our  ride  shall  be  near." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  of  the  fact  that  vast  revo- 
lutionary forces  are  at  work  casting  the  race  in  some 
new  social  mould  and  it  is  the  coming  of  this  new 
order — for  him  the  entrance  into  that  Kingdom  of  All- 
Souls  which  is  beyond  the  realm  of  the  sensual  and 

[371 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

above  that  of  the  moral  law — that  Mr.  Woodberry 
hails  in  stanzas  which  seem  based  on  passionate,  pro- 
phetic conviction  rather  than  on  that  vague  hope  of  an 
unvisualized  millenium  which  has  given  a  subject  to 
so  many  poets.  The  motive  is  one  long  familiar  to 
poetry;  but  the  method  of  its  working  out  in  the 
intellect  and  the  characteristic  intensity  of  its  treat- 
ment are  peculiar  to  Mr.  Woodberry.  The  Way,  and 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil  are  more  successful  in  the 
poetic  presentation  of  these  ideas  than  is  the  poem 
entitled  The  Kingdom  of  All-Souls,  which  is  printed 
first  in  the  volume.  All  grew  out  of  New  England, 
much  as  the  French  Revolution  grew  out  of  the  ancien 
regime,  or  Wilde's  comedies  from  the  conservatism  of 
the  Victorian  era ;  but  they  could  not  have  been  writ- 
ten by  a  poet  who  had  spent  his  days  looking  out  on 
Beverly  from  his  study  window,  or  by  one  who  had 
come  into  less  intimate  contact  than  has  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  with  other  lives  in  other  lands.  It  is  the  human 
touch,  the  humanity  in  him,  that  turns  a  theory  of  life 
into  a  living  force. 

III. 

The  North  African  pieces  in  this  section  of  the 
book  take  their  rise  in  the  poet's  Mediterranean  wan- 
derings which  brought  to  his  native  New  Englandism, 
with  the  color  of  the  South,  the  background  of  a  world 
older  in  experience.  They  illustrate  better  than  any 
others  what  has  been  said  regarding  his  deepening 
sense  of  the  impermanence  of  the  individual,  the  con- 
tinuity of  life.  There  are  mysterious  elements  in  man 
— weird  traces  of  atavism,  perceptions  of  age-old  wis- 
dom— to  which  some  are  sensitive  and  most  are  not. 
Seldom  has  this  shadowland  on  the  borders  of  con- 
sciousness, with  its  strange  landscapes,  been  painted 
as  Mr.  Woodberry  paints  it  here,  and  one  must  turn 

[38] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

to  his  prose  book  on  North  Africa  to  find  again  the 
mystery  of  the  desert-world  so  subtly  rendered  and 
interpreted. 

These  poems  also  show  a  persistent  sense  of  dual 
personality,  though  not  in  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the 
term ;  it  is  as  though  the  soul  itself  had  a  double  ex- 
istence, as  a  separate  entity — young  and  inexperienced 
— and  as  an  emanation  of  the  race-soul,  endowed  with 
race  consciousness  and  memories,  and  at  home  in  a 
world  that  is  not  subject  to  change  though  it  expresses 
itself  in  transitory  manifestations.  Looked  at  from 
another  point  of  view,  this  duality  is  that  of  the  better 
and  the  lower  natures  in  man,  the  untrammeled  spirit 
and  the  part  that  is  fettered  by  sense — again  the  horses 
of  the  Phaedrus.  More  will  be  said  of  this  in  connec- 
tion with  The  Roamer;  but  it  is  now  clear  that  the 
golden  thread  we  started  to  follow,  however  it  may 
have  changed  its  direction,  has  led  on  unbroken.  A 
poem  called  The  Riding  is,  unfortunately,  too  long  to 
quote,  and  another  must  be  made  to  do  service  in  its 
place,  though  choice  is  difficult,  as  each  of  the  shorter 
ones  illustrates  only  a  part  of  what  has  been  said. 

THE  REVENANT. 
It  was  at  Tunis,  in  the  shop 
I  told  you  of,  where  women  stop, 
And  falls  the  perfume,  drop  by  drop, 

That  first  he  came, 
Who  in  my  own  flesh  dotheth  him, 
And  drugs  my  soul  with  memories  dim, 
And  fills  my  body  to  the  brim, 

A  perfumed  flame. 

I  know  new  meanings  in  the  rose, 
Old  channels  in  my  sense  unclose, 

[391 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

Along  my  nerves  the  music  goes 

Of  ancient  time; 

And  I  am  changed  to  what  has  been, — 
Silk-robed,  and  turbaned  with  the  green, 
I  try  the  thin  edge  damascene 

Of  secret  crime. 

To  leaner  sheaths  my  spirit  shrinks, 
And  long-forbidden  pleasures  drinks; 
The  mindless  life  that  never  thinks, 

Crumbles  my  soul; 
And  o'er  the  ruined  yellow  wall 
Of  zvhat  I  was,  there  groweth  tall 
A  flower,  ivhose  incense  like  a  pall 

Doth  round  me  roll. 

I  hear  a  padding  on  the  stones, 
There  comes  a  terror  in  my  bones, 
A  throttling  stills  my  crumpled  moans 

And  little  cries; 
And  who  is  he  sits  in  my  place, 
A  lither  soul,  a  softer  grace, 
A  lore  of  ages  in  his  face, 

And  world-wise  eyesf 

The  Revenant!  in  every  clime 
He  uses  me  to  be  the  mime 
Of  weird  things  acted  in  the  time 

Of  long  ago; 

What  mysteries  of  heart  and  brain, 
What  forms  of  beauty,  forms  of  pain, 
The  sun  shall  never  see  again, 

Revive  and  glow! 


[40 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

A  thousand  years  has  he  been  clay 
Who  from  me  takes  the  soul  away, 
And  in  my  body  makes  his  play, 

Do  what  I  can; 

Strange  visitant,  in  myriad  shapes, 
Who  in  myself  my  being  apes! 
Ah,  nowhere  now  my  soul  escapes 

The  Ghost  of  Man. 

It  is  impossible  to  close  this  section  without  referring 
to  Comrades,  a  poem  which  has  perhaps  been  liked  by 
more  people  than  any  other  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  re- 
cent pieces.  It  has  the  sadness  inevitable  to  retro- 
spection and  advancing  age,  for  many  comrades  have 
departed  and  of  those  who  survive  each  is  absorbed 
by  his  own  life,  the  close  intimacies  of  youth  being  no 
longer  possible  in  later  years ;  but  it  is  a  very  human 
poem  and  as  direct  in  its  appeal  as  anything  in  the 
book. 

O  love  that  passes  the  love  of  woman! 

Who  that  hath  felt  it  shall  ever  forget, 
When  the  breath  of  life  with  a  throb  turns  human, 

And  a  lad's  heart  is  to  a  lad's  heart  set? 

Mr.  Woodberry  has  a  native  talent  for  writing 
lyrics. 

IV. 

The  second  division  of  the  volume  takes  us  again 
to  the  Mediterranean  world,  but  here  instead  of  pic- 
turing the  dancing  girl  of  the  desert,  seen  while 

With  lids  that  doze  in  panther  sleep 
Bedouins  upon  her  motions  keep 
Their  couchant  eyes  .  .  . 

Mr.  Woodberry  shows  us  Italy  and  Sicily — lands  of 
[411 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

sunlight  peopled  with  singing  youths  and  maidens — 
and  Greece  where  sometimes  children  seen  against 
gray  ruins  have  the  sadness  of  ages  in  their  eyes.  On 
the  whole,  however,  it  is  a  light-hearted  part  of  the 
book ;  the  passion  has  burned  itself  out,  the  poet  being 
contented  to  rest  for  a  little  in  the  sunlight,  enjoying 
quietly  what  nature  gives  him,  but  ready  to  answer 
with  quick  response  to  any  contact  with  her  children. 
One  feels  in  these  poems  the  quality  that  has  made 
the  heart  of  youth  turn  to  Mr.  Woodberry  himself 
with  such  unusual  devotion — a  quality  that  has  made 
him,  entirely  apart  from  his  writings,  a  power  in  the 
lancj — and  fortunately  for  the  critic  most  of  them 
are  of  a  kind  about  which  nothing  need  be  said  in 
description  or  elucidation.  In  some — the  beautiful 
stanzas  on  Proserpine,  for  example — the  poet  strikes 
a  deeper  note,  but  even  in  these  the  thought  has  the 
mellowness,  the  genial  warmth  of  an  October  noon- 
tide, the  author  seeming  to  be  in  a  mood  of  quiet 
acquiescence,  accepting  life  as  it  is  and  willing  to  be 
warmed  by  the  autumn  sunlight,  without  revolt  against 
the  recognized  imperfections  of  the  order  in  which  we 
live  and  without  the  tumult  of  unsatisfied  aspiration. 
The  poet  in  the  land  he  loves  and  keenly  responsive 
to  all  the  beauty  of  it, 

From  the  silver  tips  of  the  olive  tops 
To  the  silver  edge  of  the  sea, 

has  come  to  accept  impermanence,  to  see  in  decay 
evolution,  in  transitoriness  the  passing  on  of  the 
"torch," — even  to  accept  Death  as  something  beautiful 
in  itself  and  the  possible  opening  of  a  doorway  to  new 
beauty,  new  things  to  be  loved,  fresh  objects  of  desire. 
Mr.  Woodberry  has  always  been  a  great  lover ;  he  has 
loved  the  sky  and  the  sea,  the  Italian  hillsides  and 

[42] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

the  Northern  Shore,  but  most  of  all  he  has  loved  the 
heart  of  youth  with  its  aspirations  and  its  glimpses 
of  the  eternal. 

There  is  nothing,  as  was  said  above,  in  the  third 
part  of  the  1914  collection  which  requires  comment. 


43] 


CHAPTER   IV. 
I. 

The  main  part  of  this  volume  would  end  here  were 
it  not  for  The  First  Book  of  The  Roamer,  a  fragment 
nearly  one  thousand  lines  long  which  was  published 
in  a  magazine  called  "East  and  West,"  October,  1900. 
A  few  copies  of  this  first  book  with  a  second  added 
were  privately  printed  in  1903,  just  as  Mr.  Wood- 
berry's  years  of  silence  commenced ;  but  the  first  alone 
can  be  considered  here,  as  the  second  has  not  yet  been 
made  public,  and  the  remaining  ones,  if  they  have 
been  written,  exist  only  in  manuscript.  The  first  book, 
however,  demands  a  chapter  by  itself ;  for  beside  the 
fact  that  probably  upon  The  Roamer,  if  it  is  finished, 
a  large  part  of  the  author's  fame  will  ultimately  rest; 
he  seems  to  have  concentrated  in  the  part  we  have  of 
it  the  finest  of  his  thought,  and  to  have  put  there  cer- 
tainly as  fine  poetry  as  any  that  he  has  yet  written. 

The  poem,  if  the  whole  may  be  judged  from  a  part, 
is  an  epic  of  the  soul  of  man ;  the  epic  conflict  being 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower  natures.  Apart  from 
the  machinery  of  the  piece  and  its  imaginary  land- 
scape, The  Roamer — -and  it  must  be  clearly  understood 
that  only  the  first  book  is  before  us — might  be  called 
an  autobiography  of  the  spirit.  It  is  a  reasoned,  or- 
derly account  of  the  spiritual  experiences  that  have 
been  the  motive  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  work  from  the 
beginning;  it  describes  the  early  vision  of  an  ideal, 
eternal  world ;  the  consecration  of  the  young  soul  to  a 
realization  of  this  in  daily  experience ;  the  boy  knight 
setting  out  upon  his  quest;  the  gathering  of  the 
powers  of  darkness  bringing  him  the  perception  of  his 

[441 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

own  lower  nature  and  of  the  evil  of  the  world;  his 
wounds  and  wavering  and  final  determination  to 
cleave  to  the  ideal,  though  the  cost  may  be  the  only 
life  we  actually  know,  and  though  half  the  object  of 
the  quest — the  desire  to  realize  the  eternal  beauty  so 
clearly  that  it  can  be  brought  to  others  as  an  element 
of  vital  significance  in  their  lives — can  never  be  at- 
tained. In  its  action  the  poem  is  of  the  "Alastor" 
type,  but  there  is  a  stern  gravity  about  it  that  suggests, 
rather,  Lucretius  or  Dante ;  and  Mr.  Woodberry  has 
put  into  the  piece  his  own  passionate  earnestness.  It 
is  tempting  to  forecast  from  the  introductory  book  the 
remaining  course  of  the  poem,  but  the  part  we  have 
holds  enough  for  our  present  attention;  for  beside 
the  poetry — the  splendid  rhetoric  of  the  pages — the 
thoughts  suggested  in  it  are  of  value  as  throwing  much 
light  upon  a  phase  of  human  experience  that  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  most  and  has  seldom  been  treated  in  Eng- 
lish poetry  with  so  keen  an  intellectual  appreciation. 
The  poetic  reactions  of  Wordsworth,  to  whom  such 
experiences  were  familiar  life-long,  usually  issued  in 
quiet  emotion ;  the  intellectual  element  was  seldom 
present  and  in  the  few  poems  where  it  does  appear 
there  is  nothing  of  the  penetrating,  intense  light  of 
The  Roamer. 

II. 

The  difficulty  of  finding  an  old  copy  of  a  bygone 
magazine  is  considerable,  and  as  most  will  be  unable 
to  read  The  Roamer  for  themselves  until  it  is  finished 
and  published  in  some  more  accessible  form,  it  be- 
comes necessary  to  follow  the  poem  through  in  detail 
and  to  give  ample  quotations. 

The  Roamer — or  rather  the  fragment  we  have  of  it 
— is  compact  and  therefore  somewhat  difficult  to  epito- 
mize, but  it  starts  out  clearly  enough  with  the  an- 

[45] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

nouncement  of  a  double  duality,  that  of  the  higher  and 
lower  natures,  and  that  duality  referred  to  above  which 
makes  the  individual  soul  perceive  that  beside  its  own 
separate  existence  it  lives  as  part  of  the  race-soul — 
a  vessel  into  which  are  poured  for  transmission  race- 
ideals  and  racial  traditions.  It  is  through  separate 
manifestations  of  the  race-soul  that  the  "torch"  of 
Mr.  Woodberry's  prose  works  is  handed  on  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  and  from  one  civilization  to  the 
next.  The  glowing  invocation  with  which  the  poem 
opens  is  chiefly  concerned  with  the  race  and  the  pos- 
sible realization  of  its  long-delayed  ideals  through 
American  democracy — an  idea  that  was  part  of  the 
purely  American  patriotism  characteristic  of  this 
period  of  the  author's  development.  The  Roamer  him- 
self— the  protagonist  of  the  poem — is  imaged  some- 
times as  the  higher  nature — the  eternal  element  in  man 
— doomed  to  wander  for  awhile,  an  exile,  in  the  desert 
of  the  world,  and  sometimes  as  the  race-soul  prisoned 
in  the  individual  and  fettered  by  the  earthly  elements 
with  which  it  has  been  compounded.  The  distinctions 
between  these  two  and  the  whole  human  entity  as  ordi- 
narily known  to  sense,  are  liable  to  confuse  the  in- 
attentive reader,  and  were  it  not  for  the  extreme  elo- 
quence of  the  poem — the  persistent  beauty  of  line  and 
phrase — so  much  subtlety  and  metaphysics  would  keep 
the  piece  from  being  what  it  is — a  delight  to  read,  a 
genuine  and  unquestioned  work  of  art.  With  the  boy's 
first  sense  of  the  eternal  element  in  him  comes,  if  he 
be  that  way  gifted,  the  creative  instinct: 

Then  as  from  shadowy  pines,  before  light  comes, 
A  solitary  wood-note  bursts  too  soon — 
Some  bird  hath  waked,  and  feels  his  darkened  wings — 
Low  in  the  hollow  of  the  sea-blown  wood 

[46] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

/  set  my  fingers  to  the  unknown  stops, 

And  blew;  and  fresh  as  over  quiet  fields 

Rises  the  burden  of  the  bough  and  briar, 

New  music,  wild  and  sweet,  blown  through  the  world, 

So  rose  my  idyl;  all  the  valley -side 

Was  hushed,  and  clinging  to  my  lips  the  reed 

Felt  the  first  tremor  of  immortal  breath; 

And  like  an  angel  singing  in  his  birth, 

Aloft  the  lone  and  mounting  melody 

Moved,  darkling,  to  the  bosom  of  the  dawn. 

But  the  ideal  self — "All  I  could  never  be,"  to  use 
Browning's  phrase — comes  to  be  imaged  as  a  fair 
youth  thinking  noble  thoughts,  a  visible  form  that  can- 
not be  approached,  but  summing  in  himself  all  aspira- 
tion, must  remain  perpetually  an  object  of  desire: 

Aive  came  upon  me  seeing  in  his  face 

The  lineaments  of  my  own  all  sweetly  changed 

To  that  ideal  I  hope  to  wear  in  heaven. 

So  with  his  passion  blending  more  and  more, 

As  the  dark  earth  when  sinks  the  starry  west, 

Mortal  I  moved  to  meet  eternal  light; 

And,  moving,  dreamed  how  that  young  soul  should  be 

The  flaming  of  a  torch  across  the  years, 

And  through  the  world  the  rising  of  a  star. 

Ay  me!  but  what  avails  to  nurse  the  soul, 
And  will  the  better  world,  that  heaven  delays? 
When  hath  it  come?    Soon  gathered  round  his  heart — 
O,  too  familiar  to  this  clouded  breast — 
Immortal  dread,  awe  of  the  alien  powers 
In  this  dark  sphere, — these  vague  infinities 
Of  matter  round  the  solitude  of  mind 
With  menace,  this  dull  crush  of  monstrous  force 
Crumbling  the  dense  compact,  this  far-strown  world, 

[47] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

Abysmal  being  without  mete  or  bound, 

With  endless  shadows  roved;  whence  thought,  alarmed, 

Strains  in  its  orbit  and  its  casing  frame, 

Ranges  the  vast,  and  calls  from  star  to  star, 

With  question  of  this  cold  eternity. 

O  striving  Stress,  O  everlasting  Might, 

In  every  atom  spawning  energy 

And  cradling  life  in  every  blowing  germ, 

Storm  of  the  world,  swift  drift  and  surge  of  time 

That  lifts  the  swimmer  to  the  rushing  flood 

One  moment's  space,  and  thrusts  him  down  to  hell, 

And  rolls  the  next  aloft,  zvhile,  age  on  age, 

Millions  of  men  innumerably  spread, 

Faces  along  the  illimitable  wave, 

Float  up,  and  look,  and  sink, — O  star-cold  Space, 

When  hast  thou  answered,  unto  whom,  or  where! 

Soon  youth  gains  an  equally  clear  perception  of  the 
evils  that  are  in  life,  and  when  this  comes,  the  reality 
and  immanence  of  the  ideal  seem  lost — 

Too  mortal  is  he  born  whom  God  doth  choose! 

This  part  of  the  poem  is  carried  forward  through  a 
superb  succession  of  wild  landscape  pictures,  until 
finally  when  the  shock  of  surprise  has  worn  away, 
good  and  evil,  beauty  and  deformity,  are  seen  together, 
forces  eternally  in  conflict ;  and  youth  consecrates  it- 
self to  the  quest  of  the  ideal,  knowing  well  that  the 
pathway  will  be  hard  but  not  yet  quite  realizing  what 
terrors — material  and  immaterial — infest  it. 

There,  by  the  slope,  and  worming  o'er  the  edge, 
The  narrow  track  of  noble  peril  ran; 
And,  thinly  springing,  many  a  lonely  sheaf 
Of  beamy  blades  and  starry-dipping  points 

[481 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

Flashed  back  the  battle  of  the  dying  world. 
He  saw — he  sprang — he  heard  the  challenge  peal, 
Caught  like  the  mighty  blast  of  Roland  dead 
Far-blown  from  standards  of  the  fallen  Christ; 
And  light  o'erflowed  within  him,,  light  long  sought, 
From  the  old  sources  gushing,  light  divine, 
Whose  piercing  revelation  nought  obstructs, 
Created  or  imagined  or  devised, 
The  masks  of  mimicry  or  vestures  true, 
Earth's  massy  mould  or  the  dark  breast  of  man. 

Except  for  the  exquisite  lyrical  interludes  which  have 
the  reflective  function  of  the  Greek  chorus  and  com- 
ment on  the  action,  the  remainder  of  the  book  is  taken 
up  with  the  description  of  successive  phases  of  evil  that 
become  apparent  to  the  young  soul,  sometimes  wound- 
ing it  and  sometimes  causing  it  to  waver  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  growing  despair;  for  ever  as  it  follows  on, 
mounting  higher  and  higher  on  its  lonely  way,  it  sees 
more  of  the  evil  that  is  in  the  life  of  the  present  and 
grows  able,  with  accumulated  knowledge,  to  vision 
more  clearly  universal  decay,  the  transitoriness  of  all 
things,  the  worm  eternally  feeding  on  the  heart  of 
beauty. 

And  ever  where  the  far  horizons  flung 
Round  him  with  mightier  folds  the  starry  robe, 
He  read  the  man-myth  on  the  shining  hem, — 
Iran,  Chaldea,  Egypt, — and  more  late, 
Divinely  springing  from  the  Olympian  mount, 
The  torch-race  of  the  ever-dying  gods, 
Orb  after  orb  of  throneless  deity; 
And  spectral  o'er  him  broke  in  that  frore  air 
The  burnt-out  hopes,  and  ghosts  of  prophecy, 
That  once  from  holy  hearts  rose  charioted, 

[491 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

And  in  the  zenith  hung  their  mighty  faiths, — 

Visions  of  old,  by  every  mastering  race 

Set  in  the  blazing  zodiac  of  time; 

The  fiery  pillar  that  brought  Israel  forth 

Rose  like  an  exhalation;  flaming  stood 

The  Cross  that  went  before  imperial  Rome; 

Pale  swam  the  moon  of  Islam  dropping  blood; 

And  out  they  flickered,  brief  as  shooting  stars; 

Then  dark  the  slow  recovery  of  his  sight, 

Weary  of  all  that  never  ceasing  death, 

Saw  Lethe  roll  against  a  purple  dawn,  .  .  . 

The  close  of  the  book  leaves  the  Roamer  apparently 
overcome  by  the  forces  of  evil  and,  like  Roland  at 
Roncesvalles,  consoled  only  by  the  sense  of  his  own 
loyalty : 

And  in  his  ears  faint  rang  the  dying  blast 
Of  Roland  dead  with  all  his  chivalry. 

The  Roamer  is  a  very  noble  poem,  and  its  connection 
with  the  rest  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  work  is  obvious. 


50 


CHAPTER   V. 

Intense  spirituality ;  a  passionate  loyalty  to  the  ideal 
with  an  almost  equal  devotion  to  the  world  of  sense, 
the  two  being  seen  oftenest  as  forces  in  conflict,  or 
the  one  as  a  lure  winning  the  spirit  from  its  consecra- 
tion to  the  other;  a  growing  breadth  of  interest  and 
sympathy  issuing  in  an  increased  externality  and  lack 
of  self-centredness ;  the  love  of  children ;  an  unusually 
keen  appreciation  of  color  and  light;  a  growing  per- 
ception of  the  complete  inter-relation  of  all  manifesta- 
tions of  the  life-spirit;  these  are  the  leading  charac- 
teristics of  Mr.  Woodberry  as  a  poet.  He  is  of  the 
great  Platonic  tradition  which  has  been  handed  down 
in  English  poetry  by  Shelley  and  Wordsworth,  and 
Shelleyean  is  his  insistence  upon  love  as  the  means 
of  race-salvation,  and  upon  the  complete  realization  of 
democracy  as  the  essential  step  in  social  progress.  His 
New  Englandism,  from  certain  traditional  phases  of 
which  he  subsequently  revolted,  has  been  sufficiently 
pointed  out,  and  there  is  no  need  of  dwelling  further 
upon  that  glow  of  color  which  came  to  his  poetry 
from  the  Mediterranean  years ;  but  the  thought  has 
not  been  more  than  suggested  that  the  poet's  develop- 
ment from  the  subjectivity  and  localization  of  interest 
shown  in  his  early  work  to  that  all-embracing  sym- 
pathy and  sense  of  kinship  which  make  his  later  poems 
what  they  are,  may  also  have  been  a  gift  of  that  older 
world,  where  the  individual  is  seen  against  a  back- 
ground of  the  ages,  and  the  continuity  of  life,  through 
perpetual  recurrence  of  bloom  and  decay,  leaves  its 
impress  upon  the  least  sensitive  mind.  Greece  is  not 
dead — nor  Italy — and  bountiful  Demeter  still  pours 

[51] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

upon  her  Mediterranean  lands  an  inexhaustible  gift 
to  mortals.  Had  it  not  been  for  Greece,  for  the  affinity 
between  the  author's  mind  and  the  great  traditions  of 
European  culture,  his  poetry  would  have  been  a  dif- 
ferent, a  less  intensely  living  thing  than  it  is. 

One  as  familiar  as  Mr.  Woodberry  must  be  with 
the  imaginative  literature  of  the  world — one  with  the 
scholar's  perspective — can  only  create  genuine  poetry 
of  his  own  if  he  is  of  the  few  who  being  driven  on- 
ward by  a  sort  of  inner  necessity,  are  actually  called 
to  do  so.  A  poet,  for  example,  who  had  never  heard 
of  Rousseau,  Chateaubriand,  the  ingenious  Mrs.  Behn, 
"Paul  and  Virginia,"  or  "Daphnis  and  Chloe,"  might 
invent  for  himself  the  theory  of  the  return  to  nature 
and  express  it  with  passionate  sincerity;  but  one  to 
whom  the  idea  was  familiar  as  an  element  in  the  cul- 
ture of  the  race  would  have  to  bring  to  his  annuncia- 
tion of  it  something  new  and  peculiarly  his  own  to 
make  his  message  seem  of  importance  either  to  him- 
self or  to  a  reader  similarly  endowed.  It  is  the  pas- 
sion in  Mr.  Woodberry,  the  intensity  of  his  spirit- 
uality, the  persistence  and  conviction  with  which  he 
clings  to  the  ideal  that,  with  the  peculiar  iridescence 
of  his  style,  give  to  his  poetry  its  distinctive  value. 

In  the  work  of  poets  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  type  there 
are  over-tones,  the  glow  of  reflected  lights  which  bring 
to  their  creations  an  added  wealth  of  beauty.  The 
reader  whose  mind  is  sufficiently  stocked,  who  is  sensi- 
tively receptive  of  these  impressions,  in  reading  such 
poems  reads  also  Sophocles  and  Virgil,  Dante  and 
Petrarch;  he  whose  ear  is  attuned  to  catch  the  over- 
tones perceives — subconsciously  it  may  be — that  each 
poem  has  a  beauty  added  to  its  own  beauty,  a  duality 
of  existence,  like  that  which  has  been  referred  to  in 
another  connection,  each  being  seen  as  a  thing  having 

[52] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

life  and  beauty  of  its  own  and  seen  at  the  same  time 
as  a  new  manifestation  of  the  race-mind,  a  new  blos- 
soming of  the  human  spirit.  The  glamor  brought  to 
a  poem  by  its  overtones,  by  the  perception  of  its  flow- 
ering from  a  stalk  which  is  rooted  deep  in  race-con- 
sciousness and  brings  forth  blooms  of  beauty  in  per- 
petual succession,  gives  it  a  double  power  of  appeal, 
an  effectiveness  that  depends  on  what  the  reader  is 
able  to  read  into  it — to  the  prepared  ground  on  which 
it  falls.  This  theory,  like  some  others  that  have  been 
referred  to  in  the  more  general  considerations  of  the 
present  volume,  has  been  developed  by  Mr.  Woodberry 
himself  in  his  prose  works  and  only  a  very  minor 
aspect  of  it  can  be  illustrated  here.  Thomas  Hardy 
has  a  poem  which  commences, 

"When  I  set  out  for  Lyonesse" ; 

and  the  phrase  has  all  the  romance  of  the  Arthurian 
stories  back  of  it ;  if  the  author's  destination  had  been 
Casterbridge  the  line  would  produce  in  a  reader  fa- 
miliar with  Mr.  Hardy's  novels  an  entirely  different 
set  of  reactions,  it  would  call  to  his  mind  new  and 
equally  distinct  images ;  but  if  the  word  Liverpool 
should  be  substituted  for  the  word  Lyonesse,  the  line 
would  have  no  overtones  at  all,  no  meaning  other  than 
geographical  except  to  the  few  who  happen  to  have 
intimate  associations  with  that  place.  Either  substitu- 
tion would  alter  and  limit  the  appeal.  A  word  like 
Lyonesse  has  its  overtones,  but  ideas  and  ideals  which 
have  lived  on  from  generation  to  generation,  in  gather- 
ing to  themselves  an  accretion  of  spiritual  significance, 
have  gained  an  existence  more  real  than  that  of  any 
transient  reality.  The  perception  of  these  things 
counts  in  art — and  in  life;  and  one  cannot  justly  ap- 
preciate a  poem  unless  he  knows  whereof  the  author 

[53] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

speaks.  Mr.  Woodberry's  poetry  presupposes  the  ex- 
istence of  things  of  the  spirit  and  some  of  it  demands 
from  the  reader  an  openness  to  spiritual  contacts.  The 
poet's  practical  idealism  is  his  own  by  right  of  personal 
possession ;  it  is  also  a  part  of  the  inherited  traditions 
of  European  culture  with  which  he  is  familiar,  and 
the  reader  who  is  able  to  see  in  it  the  glamor  of  famil- 
iar things,  old  aspirations,  old  strivings  of  the  spirit, 
will  not  only  get  more  out  of  it  than  one  who  is  not, 
but  will  also  be  able  to  appreciate  more  justly  and 
more  keenly  those  elements  of  beauty  in  the  author's 
work  which  are  peculiarly  his  own. 

Superficially,  Mr.  Woodberry  with  his  idealism,  is 
somewhat  of  a  poet's  poet,  his  appeal  coming  most 
strongly  to  those  who  find  the  air  he  breathes  native, 
or  at  least,  not  wholly  unfamiliar.  Looking  more 
deeply  than  this,  he  is  the  poet  of  youth,  giving,  as  he 
does,  voice  to  those  usually  evanescent  ideals  and  as- 
pirations whose  flowering  is  of  the  springtime ;  but 
pursuing  the  inquiry  still  further,  we  find  that  mood  of 
longing  which  he  has  made  distinctively  his  own,  that 
passionate  craving  for  permanence,  the  ideal,  in  a 
world  of  impermanence,  which  is  the  spiritual  burden 
of  his  message,  to  be  one  that  lies  deep  in  the  general 
heart  of  man  and  is  a  universal  phase  of  human  ex- 
perience. Youth  can  follow  most  easily — at  least  in 
imagination — Mr.  Woodberry's  starry  flight ;  but  there 
is  hardly  anyone  who  does  not  find  at  one  time  or  an- 
other welling  up  through  buried  strata  of  consciousness 
that  mood  of  aspiration  which  the  poet  has  given  his 
years  to  express ;  and  a  writer  of  verse  whose  char- 
acteristic view  of  life,  whose  message,  is  of  general 
human  significance  has  in  his  subject  matter  the  sub- 
stance of  poetry  whose  value  is  enduring,  and  has 
at  least  one  characteristic  of  a  major  rather  than  of 

[541 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

a  minor  poet. 

No  attempt  to  estimate  Mr.  Woodberry's  position 
as  a  vital  force  in  American  life  and  letters — and  this 
is  an  attempt  which  the  present  writer  does  not  feel 
called  upon  to  make — can  afford  to  forget  for  a  mo- 
ment that  while  his  poetry  may  be  the  final  distillation 
of  what  he  has  in  him,  the  writing  of  verse  is  only 
one  of  the  ways  in  which  he  has  found  means  of  self- 
expression.  He  is  best  known  to  the  world  at  large 
as  a  writer  of  prose,  a  constructive  thinker  whose 
sympathetic,  interpretative  criticisms  of  art  and  of  life 
have  won  him  a  place  of  distinction  among  his  con- 
temporaries ;  but  beside  this,  there  is  that  peculiar 
power  of  his  personality  which  has  affected  strongly 
the  young  men  who  have  come  into  contact  with  him 
in  his  classrooms  or  elsewhere,  and  is  a  fact  recognized 
even  by  those  who  are  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  man  and  with  his  work.  He  has  a  strange  ability 
to  evoke  loyalty  in  the  most  curiously  diverse  kinds  of 
people — poets  and  business  men,  leaders  of  fashion 
and  outcasts,  intellectuals  and  Calabrian  peasants — and 
the  fact  of  his  having  this  power  even  over  some  who 
probably  never  have  read  anything  he  has  written,  or 
who  read  it  only  because  it  is  his,  is  a  sufficient 
comment  upon  the  genuineness  of  that  sympathetic 
understanding  and  idealism  which  are  traits  of  his 
work.  Poetry  is  an  expression  of  personality  and  it 
may  well  be  that  that  passionate  sincerity,  that  un- 
worldly and  unwavering  insistence  upon  spiritual 
values  which  we  have  noted  in  the  one  may  be  in 
the  other  what  has  drawn  men  to  him.  Whether  or 
not  that  ideal  world  of  which  most  catch  fleeting 
glimpses  and  which  to  some  seems  home,  be  only  an- 
other illusion  of  the  senses,  the  enduring  perception  of 
it  made  Wordsworth  what  he  was,  and  in  Mr.  Wood- 

[55] 


GEORGE      EDWARD      WOODBERRY 

berry's  case  has  drawn  to  him,  through  his  life  as 
through  his  art,  the  heart  of  youth. 

Poetry  is  a  shadow,  the  imperfect  representation  of 
something  else;  it  is  also  the  opening  of  a  door,  and 
the  function  of  criticism  is  to  show  what  door  has  been 
opened  and  to  help  eyes  that  are  unaccustomed  to  all 
but  objects  of  common  familiarity  see  the  beauty  that 
is  beyond.  If  a  poet  lifts  only  a  corner  of  the  painted 
veil,  if  he  brings  to  us  even  a  little  of  the  white  radi- 
ance, his  mission  is  accomplished ;  and  the  peculiarity 
of  Mr.  Woodberry's  poetry  is  that  what  it  preserves 
of  the  light  beyond  is  comparatively  unstained  by 
transmission. 

Since  the  publication  of  the  1914  volume,  the  occa- 
sional appearance  in  the  magazines  of  poems  by  Mr. 
Woodberry  has  given  evidence  of  his  continued  cre- 
ative activity,  and  at  the  close  of  such  a  study  as  this 
it  is  pleasant  to  look  forward.  The  war  must  have 
stirred  him  deeply,  and  whether  his  next  publication 
be  the  completed  Roamer  or  a  collection  of  new  and 
shorter  pieces  it  will  be  interesting  to  see  how  his 
belief  in  the  coming  of  a  new  age,  his  faith  in  the 
realization  of  brotherhood  may  have  changed  or  de- 
veloped. Mr.  Woodberry  is  a  profound  thinker  as 
well  as  a  poet;  and  his  message  of  idealism,  of 
spirituality  and  brotherhood  is  one  that  'America, 
should  ponder.* 


*Since  these  lines  were  sent  to  the  printer  the  Woodberry 
Society  has  announced  the  immediate  publication  of  a  volume 
of  sonnets  written  by  Mr.  Woodberry  and  entitled  Ideal 
Passion. 


56] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
I. 

1871-72. 

""Contributions  to  The  Voice,  written  at  Exeter. 

The  Voice  was  a  country  weekly  newspaper,  published  (an 
Exeter  classmate  says)  in  New  Hampshire.  The  editor  of- 
fered two  columns  to  the  Exeter  school  boys,  in  connection 
with  his  contribution  to  the  new  Academy  building.  Mr. 
Woodberry  was  one  of  the  six  school  editors.  In  this  paper 
appeared  his  first  printed  poem — The  Greek  Beggar(?) — and 
other  things.  No  copy  known. 

II. 
1873. 

The  Magenta,  Harvard,  Vol.  I,  No.  9,  p.  101.  Sonnet,  "O 
Love,  whom  I  in  early  dreams  have  seen." 

III. 

1873-76. 

Contributions  (verse  and  prose)  to  the  Harvard  Advocate. 

Vol.  XV.,  No.  1-March  11,  1873-Forebodings. 

Vol.  XV.,  No.  3— April  1,  1873— Horace. 

Vol.  XV.,  No.  6— May  2,  1873— Blushes. 

Vol.  XV.,  No.  7— May  14,  1873— Three  Songs:  Flowers, 
Fruits,  Twilight. 

Vol.  XVI.,  No.  4— Oct.  31,  1873— Sea  Mists. 

Vol.  XVI.,  No.  6— Nov.  28,  1873— To  a  Star. 

Vol.  XVI.,  No.  9— Jan.  23,  1874— Semper  Resurgens. 

Vol.  XVII.,  No.  1— Feb.  20,  1874— An  Elective  in  Art 
(Prose).  Signed  "H.  N.  D.,"  which  was  his  pseudonym. 

Vol.  XVII.,  No.  1— Feb.  20,  1874— Sonnet.     Shelley. 

Vol.  XVII.,  No.  6— May  1,  1874— Desecration. 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  one  of  the  editors  of  Vol.  XVII. 

Vol.  XVIII.,  Supplement  Oct.  3,  1874— Sonnet  on  Reading 
Spenser. 

Vol.  XVIII.,  Supplement  Oct.  3,  1874— Cigarette  Ash. 

Vol.  XVIII.,  No.  2— Oct.  6,  1874— The  Violet  Crown.  (See 
Lowell's  comment  on  this  poem  quoted  Nebraska  Literary 
Magazine,  Vol.  I.,  No.  1.) 

Vol.  XVIIL,  No.  5— Nov.  27,  1874-Sonnet.  By  the  Night 
Sea. 

Vol.  XVIIL,  No.  6-Dec.  11,  1874-Paul  at  Athens.  A 
Cynic  Philosopher  and  his  Scholar  Lycius. 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  not  an  editor  of  Vol.  XVIIL,  being 
absent  from  college. 


•The  compiler  regrets  that  he  has  been  obliged  to  leave  to  the 
industry  or  good  fortune  of  some  future  bibliographer  the  details 
which  should  have  been  given  under  numbers  I,  VI,  VIII  and  XVIII. 

[571 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  2— March  5,  1875— Lydian  Airs  (Three 
poems). 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  2— March  5,  1875— The  Life  and  Death  of 
Pietro,  A.  D.  1348. 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  3-March  19,  1875— Lydian  Airs  (Two 
poems). 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  4— April  2,  1875-The  Philosophical  De- 
partment (Prose). 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  5— April  16,  1875— The  Wanderer's  Refrain. 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  5— April  16,  1875— Sonnet  on  an  Easter 
Sunrise. 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  5— April  16,  1875— Sonnet.    Unnoticed  Love. 

Vol.  XIX.,  No.  9— June  16,  1875— The  Study  of  Ideas 
(Prose). 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  one  of  the  editors  of  Vol.  XIX. 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  1— Oct.  1,  1875— Aristophanes  Apology  (Re- 
view). 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  2— Oct.  8,  1875— In  May  Days. 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  4— Nov.  5,  1875— The  Antigone  at  Harvard 
(Prose). 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  5— Nov.  19,  1875— An  Evolutionist's  Idea  of 
Harvard  (Prose). 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  6— Dec.  3,  1875— The  Culture  of  our  Stu- 
dents (Prose). 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  8— Jan.  10,  1876— Victorian  Poets  (Review). 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  10— Feb.  4,  1876— Song. 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  10— Feb.  4,  1876— Ode  to  a  Forest  Rose. 

Vol.  XX.,  No.  10— Feb.  4,  1876— Dansville  Hills. 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  one  of  the  editors  of  Volume  XX. 

Vol.  XXL,  No.  1— Feb.  18,  1876— After  Sunset. 

Vol.  XXL,  No.  1— Feb.  18,  1876— Serenade. 

Vol.  XXL,  No.  3— March  17,  1876— Parting  Song. 

Vol.  XXL,  No.  6— April  28,  1876— The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Sup- 
per (?)  (Prose). 

Vol.  XXL,  No.  10— June  23,  1876— The  Harvard  Decalogue. 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  one  of  the  editors  of  Volume  XXI. 

IV. 
1876. 

Verses  from  the  Harvard  Advocate.  Hurd  &  Houghton. 
New  York.  1876. 

This  volume  contains  fourteen  poems  by  G.  E.  W.,  re- 
printed from  the  Advocate. 

V. 
October,  1876-June,  1878. 

Contributions  (verse  and  prose)  to  the  Harvard  Advocate. 
Among  Mr.  Woodberry's  contributions,  many  were  unsigned 

[58] 


BIBLIOGR AP  H Y 

editorials,  etc.    Those  known  to  be  by  him  are : 

Vol.  XXII.,  No.  9— Jan.  26,  1877— Arachne's  Spinning. 

Vol.  XXII.,  No.  10— Feb.  2,  1877— Prosit  Neujahr. 

Mr.  Woodberry  was  an  editor  of  Vol.  XXII. 

Vol.  XXIII.,  No.  3— March  16,  1877— Lines  Upon  Hearing 
Some  Music. 

Vol.  XXIII.,  No.  5— April  10,  1877— Sonnet.  After  read- 
ing Keats'  letters.  (The  reference  is  to  Lord  Houghton's 
Life.) 

Vol.  XXIII.,  No.  8— The  Senior  Petitions. 

Vol.  XXIV.,  No.  5— Nov.  16,  1877— Lines  in  Autumn. 

VI. 
1876-1891. 

Reviews  in  Atlantic.  Boston.  The  great  bulk  of  these  were 
1880-1891.  The  Atlantic  index,  1889,  lists  seventy-three  titles. 

VII. 

1877. 

The  Relation  of  Pallas  Athene  to  Athens.  Oratio  a  Georgio 
Edvardo  Woodberry.  Written  for  the  Harvard  Commence- 
ment, 1877.  Privately  printed  for  the  Signet  Society  of  Har- 
vard University,  1877.  Paper.  Eleven  pages.  Thirty  copies 
printed. 

VIII. 

1878-1903. 

Reviews  in  The  Nation.    New  York. 

The  great  bulk  of  these  were  1878-79  and  1884-91.  They 
are  unsigned,  but  there  is  said  to  be  an  index  giving  the  au- 
thors of  all  unsigned  articles  in  the  vaults  at  the  office  of 
The  Nation. 

IX. 
1879. 

History  of  Wood-Engraving  (two  articles),  in  Harper's 
Magazine. 

X. 

1881. 

The  Fortunes  of  Literature  under  the  American  Republic. 
Fortnightly  Review.  May.  Reprinted  in  Eclectic  Magazine. 

XI. 
1882. 

The  Real  Issues  in  the  University.  A  public  letter  by  Pro- 
fessors Church,  Emerson,  and  Woodberry.  Written  by  G.  E. 

[59] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W.     Issued  February,   1882.     Appeared  also  translated  into 
German  in  the  Nebraska  Stoats- Anzeiger. 

XII. 
1883. 

Trial  printing  of  The  North  Shore  Watch.  July  22.  One 
proof.  Lincoln,  Nebraska. 

XIII. 
1883. 

The  North  Shore  Watch. 

Boards,  vel.  back,  200  copies,  Privately  Printed  (by  sub- 
scription). With  engraved  frontispiece. 

XIV. 
1883. 

A  History  of  Wood  Engraving.    Illustrated. 
Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York 

XV. 

1885. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    Boston.    With  portrait. 
In  American  Men  of  Letters  Series. 

XVI. 
1886. 

Second  Series.  New  verses  from  the  Harvard  Advocate, 
1876-1886.  Privately  printed  by  Kilbourne  Tompkins,  No.  79 
Cedar  Street,  New  York.  Contains  four  poems  by  G.  E.  W. 
that  appeared  in  the  Advocate  between  October,  1876,  and 
June,  1878. 

XVII. 
1887. 

My  Country:  An  Ode. 

Privately  printed,  50  copies.  Blue  paper  covers.  Published 
in  Atlantic  Monthly,  July,  1887. 

XVIII. 
1888.    The  Boston  Post. 

G.  E.  W.  was  Literary  Editor  for  a  year  and  wrote  a  great 
deal  for  it. 

XIX. 
1888. 

Song  of  Promise.  Words  by  George  Edward  Woodberry. 
Composed  by  John  Knowles  Paine,  Op.  43,  for  the  Cincinnati 

[60] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Musical  Festival  of  May,  1888.    Published  by  the  John  Church 
Co.  of  Cincinnati.  Paper  covers.    (Words  from  "My  Country.") 

XX. 

1889. 

Authors  at  Home.  Edited  by  J.  L.  and  J.  B.  Gilder.  Cas- 
sell  Publishing  Co.  New  York. 

Article,  James  Russell  Lowell  (republished  from  the  Critic). 

XXI. 
1889. 

Notes  on  the  MS.  Volume  of  Shelley's  Poems  in  the  Library 
of  Harvard  College.  Bibliographical  Contributions  No.  35. 
Cambridge,  Mass.  Issued  by  the  Library  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. 

XXII. 
1889. 
Agathon. 
Trial  printing.    Two  or  three  copies  printed.    Unbound. 

XXIII. 
1890. 

The  North  Shore  Watch  and  Other  Poems. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    Boston. 

XXIV. 
1890. 

Studies  in  Letters  and  Life. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    Boston. 

Reprints,  with  revision,  from  the  Atlantic  and  The  Nation. 
Red  cloth. 

Same  in  blue  cloth. 

XXV. 
1891. 
Literature  in  the  Market-place.    The  Forum.    August. 

XXVI. 
1892. 

The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley; 
The  Text  newly  Collated  and  Revised  and  Edited,  with  a 
Memoir  and  Notes  by  George  Edward  Woodberry.  Centen- 
ary edition  in  four  volumes. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    Boston.    With  portrait. 

Same.    Large  paper.    In  eight  parts.    250  sets  printed. 

[61] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

XXVII. 
1892. 

The  Essays  of  Elia,  with  an  introduction  by  G.  E.  W. 
Published  by  Little,  Brown  &  Co.    Boston.    2  Vols. 

XXVIII. 
1893. 

Memorial  Celebration  of  the  Sixtieth  Anniversary  of  the 
Birth  of  Edwin  Booth.  Held  in  the  Madison  Square  Garden 
Concert  Hall,  November  13,  1893,  by  The  Players.  Contains 
Elegy  by  G.  E.  W.,  pp.  44-52. 

The  Players'  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  Edwin  Booth :  Read  at 
the  Memorial  Service,  held  under  the  direction  of  The  Play- 
ers, in  the  Madison  Square  Garden  Concert  Hall,  November 
13, 1893.  Privately  printed,  New  York,  1893.  Thirty-five  copies 
numbered  and  signed.  The  De  Vinne  Press.  Blue  paper 
covers.  The  poem  was  first  published  in  The  Evening  Post 
(New  York),  November  13,  1893. 

XXIX. 

1893. 

The  English  Drama:  Its  Rise  and  Development  to  1640. 
By  Thomas  R.  Price,  G.  E.  Woodberry  and  A.  V.  W.  Jackson. 
Syllabus  (20).  Albany.  Regents  University  Extension  De- 
partment. 

XXX. 

1894. 

The  Works  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  Newly  Collected  and 
Edited,  with  a  Memoir,  Critical  Introductions,  and  Notes,  by 
E.  C.  Stedman  and  George  E.  Woodberry.  10  Vols.  Illus- 
trated. Stone  &  Kimball.  Chicago. 

(1)  Ordinary  edition.  (2)  Large  paper.  (3)  In  vellum 
with  drawings  by  Beardsley." 

The  Same.  Special  issue.  The  Colonial  Company,  Pitts- 
burgh, 1903.  (1)  Ordinary  edition.  (2)  Autograph  edition. 
(3)  Bibliophile  edition. 

The  Same.  Duffield  and  Company,  New  York,  1907.  Single 
volume,  The  Poems,  etc.,  1907. 

The  Same.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.  New  York.  1914. 
Pocket  edition,  in  cloth  and  flexible  leather. 

The  Same.  1914.  From  new  plates  in  large  and  handsome 
type. 

XXXI. 

1894. 

Selections  from  the  Poems  of  Aubrey  de  Vere,  edited,  with 
a  Preface,  by  G.  E.  W. 

[621 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York.    With  a  portrait. 
G.  E.  W.  also  wrote  a  brief  introductory  note  to  Aubrey 
de  Vere's  Recollections  in  the  Century. 

XXXII. 

1895. 

Memories.  Nebraska  Literary  Magazine,  Vol.  I.,  No.  1. 
May. 

XXXIII. 
1895. 

To  A.  V.  W.  J . 

Twenty  copies  printed  without  title-page.  De  Vinne  Press. 
Blue  paper  covers. 

XXXIV. 
1895. 

Household  Waifs  from  many  Years,  by  Known  and  Un- 
known Poets.  Arranged  by  G.  E.  W.  (with  introductory 
quatrain  by  G.  E.  W.).  Privately  printed,  New  York,  Christ- 
mas, 1895.  De  Vinne  Press.  20  Copies.  Blue  paper  covers. 

XXXV. 
189- ? 

The  Roamer,  Book  I.  6  copies.  Privately  printed.  De 
Vinne  Press.  Blue  paper  covers. 

XXXVI. 

1896-98. 

Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  Ancient  and  Mod- 
ern. Edited  by  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  R.  S.  Peale  &  Co. 
New  York. 

Articles,  Arnold,  Coleridge,  Shelley. 

XXXVII. 
1896-99. 

Columbia  College. 

English  XIII.    Parts  i.,  ii.    Notes  for  students,  on  English 
Poetry  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  with  a  brief 
bibliography  for  dramatic  reading.    Two  pamphlets. 
1899. 

English  II.  Book  of  the  Course,  Sect.  1.  Red  paper.  42 
pages.  A  re-print  of  Rough  Notes,  1896-97,  and  Guide  Notes, 
1898-99,  a  pamphlet  and  five  leaflets  for  student  use,  together 
with  bibliographical  lists. 

XXXVIII. 
1897. 
A  School  Hymn.    Harper's  Round  Table.    June  29. 

[63] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

XXXIX. 
1898. 

The  Islands  of  the  Sea. 
Privately  printed.    One  sheet.    July  4,  1898. 

XL. 
1898. 

Essex  Regiment  March. 
Privately  printed.     One  sheet. 

XLI. 
1899. 

Rhymes,  The  Morningside,  Columbia  University,  January  1, 
1899. 

XLII. 
1899. 

A  Christmas  Greeting,  Columbia  Spectator,  December  21, 
1899. 

XLIII. 
1899. 

Wild  Eden. 
The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York. 

XLIV. 
1899. 

Warner  Classics.  (Matthew  Arnold,  pp.  97-125.)  R.  S. 
Peale  &  Co.  New  York. 

XLV. 
1899. 

Heart  of  Man.     (With  dedicatory  quatrain.) 
The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York. 

XLVI. 
1899. 
Mrs.  Ward  and  the  Brontes.    Harper's  Bazar, 

XLVII. 
1900. 

The  Roamer.     Book  I. 

In  East  and  West,  Vol.  I.,  No.  12.    New  York. 

This  "Monthly  Magazine  of  Letters/'  which  was  discon- 
tinued with  No.  12,  was  "edited  and  published  by  William 
Aspenwall  Bradley  and  George  Sidney  Hellman,"  both  mem- 
bers of  Columbia  '99. 

[641 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
XLVIII. 

1900. 

Essays  of  Bacon.  With  an  Introduction  by  G.  E.  W.  (The 
Century  Classics.) 

The  Century  Co.    New  York.    With  portrait. 

XLIX. 
1900. 

The  Century  of  Achievement  in  Literature.  Harper's 
Weekly. 

L. 
1900. 

Makers  of  Literature. 

The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York. 

A  reprint  of  "Studies  in  Letters  and  Life,"  together  with 
later  prefaces,  articles,  etc.  The  essay  on  The  Promise  of 
Keats  was  accidentally  omitted.  The  essay  on  Whittier  was 
reprinted,  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  Dec.  14,  1907.  (Essays 
on  Shelley,  Landor,  Browning,  Byron,  Arnold,  Coleridge, 
Lowell,  Whittier,  and  others.) 

LI. 

1901. 

The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 
Cambridge  edition.  (One  Vol.)  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
Boston.  Newly  and  completely  annotated.  With  a  portrait. 

LII. 
1902. 

One  Hundred  Books  Famous  in  English  Literature,  with 
Facsimiles  of  the  Title  Pages,  and  an  introduction  by  George 
Edward  Woodberry.  The  Grolier  Club  of  the  City  of  New 
York.  305  copies  printed. 

LIII. 

1902. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

American  Men  of  Letters  Series.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
Boston.  Dark  red  cloth.  With  portrait. 

Same.    Light  red  cloth.    Uncut.    Paper  label. 

Same.    Large  paper.    600  copies  printed. 

LIV. 
1903. 

Journal  of  Comparative  Literature.     Quarterly. 

New  York,  McClure,  Phillips  &  Co.  Edited  by  G.  E.  W. 
Four  numbers  issued.  No.  1  has  editorial  by  G.  E.  W.,  also 
separately  issued  as  a  leaflet.  This  is  all  he  wrote  for  the 
Journal. 

[65] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

LV. 
1903. 

Ode  read  at  the  Emerson  Centenary  Services,  Boston,  May 
24,  1903.  Privately  printed  leaflet,  12  pages.  Published  At- 
lantic Monthly,  June,  1903. 

LVI. 
1903. 

To  Nineteen  Three,  Columbia.  The  Nineteen  Hundred  and 
Three  Class  Book.  Published  by  the  Class  in  June,  1903.  Also 
privately  printed  as  a  leaflet.  Four  pages. 


LVII. 
1903. 

Representative  English  comedies,  with  introductory  essays, 
etc.,  by  various  writers,  under  the  general  editorship  of 
Charles  Mills  Gayley.  The  Macmillan  Co.  New  York. 
(Robert  Green:  his  place  in  comedy,  pp.  385-394.) 


LVIII. 
1903. 

Exeter  Ode.  Read  at  the  dedication  of  Alumni  Hall,  Phil- 
lips Exeter  Academy,  June  17,  1903.  Privately  printed  leaflet 
— eight  pages. 

Published  in  Exercises  incident  to  the  General  Reunion  of 
the  Alumni  of  Phillips  Exeter  Academy  on  the  occasion  of 
the  opening  of  the  new  Alumni  Hall,  1903.  pp.  31-35.  1904. 

LIX. 
1903. 

Requiem.    Thomas  Randolph  Price. 
Privately  printed — one  sheet. 

LX. 

Privately   printed.     De   Vinne   Press.     New   York.     Blue 
paper  covers.    Six  copies  printed. 
The  First  Two  Books  of  The  Roamer. 


LXI. 
1903. 

Poems  of  the  House  and  Other  Poems,  by  Elizabeth  M. 
Olmsted.  Privately  printed.  De  Vinne  Press.  200  numbered 
copies.  Contains  editorial  note  and  Sonnet:  To  the  Author 
on  her  Golden  Wedding,  by  G.  E.  W. ;  and  Sonnet  to  G.  E.  W., 
on  his  Twentieth  Birthday.  With  portrait. 


66] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

LXII. 
1903. 

Poems :  My  Country,  Wild  Eden,  The  Players'  Elegy,  The 
North  Shore  Watch,  Odes  and  Sonnets. 

The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York. 

This  is  a  nearly  complete  collection  of  previous  poems,  with 
new  poems  (except  The  Roamer). 

LXIII. 
1903. 

America  in  Literature. 
Harper  &  Brothers.    New  York. 
Collected  from  Harper's  Magazine. 

LXIV. 
1904. 
New  International  Encyclopaedia.    Article,  Shelley. 

LXV. 
1904. 

The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner.    By  Samuel  Taylor  Cole- 
ridge.   Edited  with  Introduction. 
American  Book  Co.    New  York.    The  Gateway  Series. 

LXVI. 
1904. 
Chamber's  Cyclopaedia  of  English  Literature.    3  Vols. 

The  general  article  on  American  Colonial  Literature  and  a 
few  notes  on  its  authors  are  by  G.  E.  W. 

LXVII. 
1905. 

The  Torch.  Eight  lectures  on  Race  Power  in  Literature, 
delivered  before  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston,  1903. 

(Man  and  the  Race,  The  Language  of  all  the  World,  The 
Titan  Myth,  I.  and  II.,  Spenser,  Milton,  Wordsworth,  Shelley.) 
McClure,  Phillips  &  Co.  New  York. 

Reissued.    The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York.    1912. 

LXVIII. 
1905. 

Swinburne. 

McClure,  Phillips  &  Co.    New  York. 

Contemporary  Men  of  Letters  Series. 

Reissued.    The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York    1912. 

English  edition  by  Heinemann. 

LXIX. 
1907. 

The  Complete  Works  of  William  Shakespeare,  edited,  etc., 
by  Sidney  Lee.  Vol.  VI.  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  with 
a  Special  Introduction  by  G.  E.  W.  George  D.  Sproul,  New 

[67] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

York.    Illustrated. 
The  same.    Vol.  III.    The  Harper  Edition.    New  York. 

LXX. 
1907. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
English  Men  of  Letters  Series. 
The  Macmillan  Co.     New  York. 

LXXI. 

1907. 

The  Appreciation  of  Literature. 
The  Baker  &  Taylor  Co.    New  York. 
Reissued  by  Doubleday,  Page  and  Co. 

LXXII. 
1907. 

Great  Writers.  (Cervantes,  Scott,  Milton,  Virgil,  Mon- 
taigne, Shakespere.) 

The  McClure  Co.    New  York. 

Shortened  forms  of  some  of  these  essays  had  appeared 
in  McClure's  Magazine. 

Reissued,  The  Macmillan  Co.    1912.    New  York. 

LXXIII. 

1907. 

Salem  Atheneum.  Address  of  G.  E.  W.,  Litt.D.,  LL.D.,  at 
the  formal  opening  of  Plummer  Hall,  Oct.  2,  1907.  Salem, 
Mass.,  Salem  Atheneum,  1907.  Green  paper  covers. 

LXXIV. 
1908. 

Select  Poems  of  Shelley.  Edited  with  Introduction  and 
Notes.  (The  essay  on  Shelley's  Poetry  is  new.) 

D.  C  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston.    Belles-Lettres  Series. 

LXXV. 
1908. 

The  Defence  of  Poesie,  etc.,  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  edited 
with  Introduction  by  G.  E.  W. 

The  Merrymount  Press,  Boston.  The  Humanists'  Library. 
303  copies. 

LXXVI. 

1909. 

The  Old  Farmer's  Almanac  by  Robert  B.  Thomas.  Boston, 
William  Ware  &  Co.,  No.  117.  Paper  covers.  Contains  Son- 
net :  Etna. 

[68] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

LXXVII. 
1909. 

Tennyson's  The  Pftncess.  Edited  with  Notes  and  an  In- 
troduction by  G.  E.  W. 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    New  York. 

LXXVIII. 
1909. 

L'Amerique  Litteraire  et  ses  Ecrivains. 

Ouvrage  adapte  de  1'Anglais  par  Achille  Laurent.  J.  Du- 
moulin.  Paris.  Blue  paper  covers.  A  translation  of  America 
in  Literature,  with  simple  biographical  and  bibliographical 
notes  by  G.  E.  W.  not  in  the  American  edition. 

LXXIX. 
1909. 

Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  2  Vols.  (A  new  work— not  a 
reprint). 

Houghton  Mifflin  Co.    Boston.    Illustrated. 

Same.    Large  paper.    Paper  label.    150  copies  printed. 

LXXX. 

1909. 

The  Cenci,  by  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  Edited  by  G.  E.  W. 
(with  introduction,  notes,  appendix,  and  bibliographies). 

Belles  Lettres  Series.    D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.    Boston. 

LXXXI. 

1910. 

The  Inspiration  of  Poetry.  Eight  lectures  on  Poetic  Energy 
delivered  before  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston,  1906. 

The  Macmillan  Co.     New  York. 

(Poetic  Madness,  Marlowe,  Camoens,  Byron,  Gray,  Tasso, 
Lucretius,  Inspiration.) 

LXXXII. 
1910. 

Transactions  of  the  Bronx  Society  of  Arts  and  Sciences. 
Vol.  I.,  Part  II.  Poe  Cententary  Exercises,  Jan.  19,  1909. 
New  York.  Published  for  the  Society,  May,  1910.  Contains 
brief  address  by  G.  E.  W.,  who  presided. 

LXXXIII. 
1911. 
Encyclopedia  Britannica.     Article,  American  Literature. 

[69] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
LXXXIV. 

1911. 

European  Years. 

Edited  with  Introduction  by  G.  E.  W. 
Houghton  Mifflin  Co.    Boston. 

LXXXV. 
1912. 

*Wendell  Phillips.  The  Faith  of  an  American.  300  copies, 
100  numbered  and  signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

LXXXVI. 
1912. 

*A  Day  at  Castrogiovanni.  300  copies,  75  numbered  and 
signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

LXXXVII. 
1912. 

*The  Kingdom  of  All-Souls  and  Two  Other  Poems  for 
Christmas.  300  copies,  100  numbered  and  signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

LXXXVIII. 
1913. 

New  Letters  of  an  Idle  Man,  by  Hermann  Jackson  Warner, 
author  of  European  Years.  Edited  by  G.  E.  W.  London. 
Constable  &  Co.  This  contains  a  brief  note  by  the  editor. 

LXXXIX. 
1913. 

Proceedings  at  the  opening  of  the  new  Library  Building, 
June  20,  1913,  Beverly,  Mass.  Printed  for  the  Trustees,  1913. 
Pamphlet,  pp.  18.  Blue  covers.  The  principal  address  was 
made  by  G.  E.  W. 

XC. 
1913. 

The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Poem.  In  Memoriam  Charles  Eliot 
Norton.  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  June  21,  1913. 

Issued  also  as  a  leaflet. 

XCI. 
1914. 

The  Flight  and  Other  Poems. 

The  Macmillan  Co.    New  York. 

One  hundred  copies  signed  by  the  author,  numbered  and 
specially  bound,  were  issued  for  members  of  the  Woodberry 
Society. 

*  The  Publications  of  the  Woodberry  Society  can  be  obtained  through 
the  book  stores  by  application  to  William  B.  Symmes,  Jr.,  Secretary, 
55  Liberty  Street,  New  York  City. 

[70] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
XCII. 


1914. 

North  Africa  and  the  Desert 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


XCIII. 
1914. 

*Two  Phases  of  Criticism:  Historical  and  Aesthetic. 

Lectures  delivered  on  The  Larwill  Foundation  of  Kenyon 
College,  May  Seventh  and  Eighth,  1913.  400  copies,  100  num- 
bered and  signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

XCIV. 
1915. 

The  Collected  Poems  of  Rupert  Brooke. 

With  an  introduction  by  George  Edward  Woodberry  and  a 
biographical  note  by  Margaret  Lavington.  With  portrait 

John  Lane  Company.     New  York. 

One  hundred  copies  of  the  first  edition  were  specially 
bound  for  the  Woodberry  Society,  and  contained  a  supple- 
mentary note,  an  extra  portrait,  and  facsimile. 


XCV. 
1915. 

Peace.     Words  by  George  Edward  Woodberry.     Music  by 
Louis  Adolphe  Coern.     Op.  81.     (Copyright,  1915.) 

Clayton  F.  Summy  Co.,  Chicago. 


XCVI. 
1916. 

*Shakespeare :  An  Address.  (Brown  University,  April  26.) 
300  copies,  75  numbered  and  signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

XCVII. 
1917. 

*Ideal  Passion :  Sonnets.  (Announced  for  publication  in 
March.)  400  copies,  100  numbered  and  signed. 

The  Woodberry  Society.    New  York. 

•  The  Publications  of  the  Woodberry  Society  can  be  obtained  through 
the  book  stores,  or  by  application  to  William  H.  Symmes,  Jr.,  Secretary, 
55  Liberty  Street,  New  York  City. 

[71] 


ADDENDA. 
A. 

General  Editor  National  Studies  in  American  Letters.  The 
Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  Four  Vols.  No  writing  by 
G.  E.  W.  The  titles  in  the  series  are : 

Old  Cambridge.     By  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  1899. 

Brook  Farm.    By  Lindsay  Swift,  1900. 

The  Clergy  in  American  Life  and  Letters.  By  Daniel  Du- 
lany  Addison,  1900. 

The  Hoosiers.     By  Meredith  Nicholson,  1900. 

B. 

General  Editor  Columbia  Studies  in  Comparative  Literature. 
The  Macmillan  Co.  New  York.  Eight  Vols.  No  writing 
by  G.  E.  W.  The  titles  in  the  series  are : 

Literary  Criticism  in  the  Renaissance.  By  Joel  Elias  Spin- 
gam,  1899. 

Spanish  Literature  in  the  England  of  the  Tudors.  By  John 
Garrett  Underbill,  1899. 

Romances  of  Roguery.    By  Frank  Wadleigh  Chandler,  1899. 

The  Classical  Heritage  of  the  Middle  Ages.  By  Henry 
Osborn  Taylor,  1901. 

The  Italian  Renaissance  in  England.  By  Lewis  Einstein, 
1902.  Illustrated. 

Platonism  in  English  Poetry.  By  John  Smith  Harrison, 
1903. 

Irish  Life  in  Irish  Fiction.    By  Horatio  Sheafe  Krans,  1903. 

The  English  Heroic  Play.    By  Lewis  Nathaniel  Chase,  1903. 


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